Icemakers’ recipe for creating an ice track

Ingredients:

Water (1 lake)
Cold (below freezing)
Wooden sticks

Process:

Leave the water outside overnight to cool
When a crust of solid ice has formed on top, step onto it and mark out the location of your track with wooden sticks. You may use a snowmobile to do this, if the ice is thicker than XX cm.
Remove any snow that might have fallen on your ice to speed up the freezing process. Repeat until your ice has grown thick enough to bring out your heavier tools. Use a radar to measure the thickness with regular intervals.
Sprinkle some snow on top to add some extra flavour

…

We have been cooking up this family recipe every winter for almost 50 years now. It might seem simple at first glance but just like the recipes in your grandmother’s cookbook, it has been carefully tweaked to perfection for every year gone by. The margins for error are small, and the tiniest oversight or shortcut taken along the way will have a negative effect on the final result. It takes knowledge, experience, an eye for details, an understanding of the natural processes which we cannot control and a whole lot of patience and perseverance to achieve consistent, high-quality results year after year. The simplicity is deceiving, because it’s all in the details. And there are many.

Water in its various forms such as snow and ice is the building material for all our ice tracks, both lake tracks and land tracks. Unlike most building materials however, it’s not brought to us by a steady, on-demand supply of delivery trucks, but rather from the heavens above. It’s the weather that decides when we can go to work and start our process, not ourselves. The only thing we can do is make sure that we are prepared and make the most of what we are given. Manipulating and shaping the raw ice into functional ice tracks, made to the exact specifications of our customers is in itself a time consuming, yet rewarding labour of love for everyone at Icemakers. Converting your knowledge and experience into something tangible and concrete is the main driving force and source of pride for any artisan or craftsman. For us, our ice tracks are the headline acts who take center stage every Winter car testing season. The ultimate manifestation of who we are and what we do. It’s in our name – we are Icemakers.

Being this dependent on nature can be unnerving and stressful at times. But it is also rewarding, humbling and very enlightening when working together with nature, rather than against it. Every winter is different, with its unique set of circumstances for us to adapt to, all while making sure the end product that we deliver to our customers is of the same high quality as in previous years.  At Icemakers, we rest assured in the high quality of our delivery, considering we’ve been around doing this business longer than anyone else in the Winter Test Region. We have been here through 50 dark, Arctic winters and believe us when we say we have experienced it all. We have accumulated the know-how, confidence and expertise needed to keep doing it for 50 more. Winter is always coming here at the Arctic Circle. In fact – it almost never leaves.