This year was scheduled to be the first year of the Kenai River Ice Classic, however due to the unseasonably warm winter, it was pushed to next year.
Heading up the project is Josselyn O’Connor of the Soldotna Rotary.
O’Connor: “Unfortunately the weather didn’t quite cooperate with us this year. We had that sort of big warm spell in January and our ice block melted but the plan was to drop another ice block off of the Soldotna Bridge and see when it broke loose. The river did freeze briefly but we didn’t have ice blocks to drop.”
O’Connor added that it just gives them an extra year to work out the kinks and is excited at the fundraising possibility for the Rotary Clubs involved to be able to put the money raised back in the communities.
O’Connor: “We didn’t actually make any money last year because we didn’t sell any tickets. So we’re still in the development stage of this and so once we get all the kinks worked out then we’ll open it up and start selling tickets. But the Nenana Ice Classic makes hundreds of thousands, so the potential for this is big.”