This winter is presenting a unique challenge to Minnesota events that depend on the cold and snow.

The Ice Castles are celebrating this week’s deep freeze, while the John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon is now being postponed due to lack of snow.

“It’s really important we dance with Mother Nature as best we can,” said Jared Henningsen, vice president of event operations for Ice Castles.

The attraction moved to the State Fairgrounds this year and opens for the season Friday.

Crews started placing icicles about a month ago and are grateful for temperatures in the teens over the next week.

“We have big icicle farms out in the back and when those icicles get to the right length, we’ll harvest them and plant them into the structure. Then the sprinkler system hits all those icicles and that’s how the whole structure continues to grow. We like to think of an ice castle as a big, living, growing organism,” Henningsen said. “Right now, our build team is working around the clock to make sure they can take full advantage of the cold weather.”

Ice Castles are made up of about 25 million pounds of ice, spanning one and a half acres.

The warm weather and rain last week caused a last-minute scare but ice builders say, overall, it did not do much damage.

“We’ve seen different weather over the years where we’ve seen it melt pretty much down to the ground and we had to rebuild completely,” said ice builder Keith Heintzelman. “That rain we had last week, we had to kind of rebuild some but not as bad as we were expecting.”

This year’s attraction will feature the return of fan favorites, including ice tunnels, sculptures and an ice slide.

It will also debut new elements, such as snow caverns, an ice river and nightly fire shows.

“Given the weather we’re looking at, we should have a much longer season than we had last year, so we’re looking forward to it,” Henningsen said.

They hope to be open for about two months.

Last year’s season only lasted one week due to the warm winter.

Meanwhile, another major winter event is moving to a backup plan.

The John Beargrease Sled Dog Marathon, which was scheduled to start in about three weeks up in Duluth, is now being postponed until March.

“It’s not an ideal situation in our world but when there’s no snow, what do you do?” said spokesperson Monica Hendrickson.

Coordinators called trail conditions “unsafe” along the 300-mile course.

“There’s a lot of places for us to enter the state trail system and unfortunately either none of them have snow or they’re too icy,” Hendrickson said.

The Beargrease is typically a qualifier for the Iditarod, but will now be held the very same day as this year’s Iditarod.

Organizers said the 2025 Beargrease will now be a qualifier for the 2026 Iditarod.

Last winter, the event was canceled entirely because of the warm winter.

“It’s a winter sport and it relies on snow and there’s absolutely nothing we can do about it,” Hendrickson said. “We’re really hoping that March 2 date sticks. If not, we’ll start planning again for next year.”

In Stillwater, the World Snow Sculpting Championship, which kicks off on Jan. 15, will go on as scheduled despite the lack of snow.

“The event will take place as scheduled with the help of Afton Alps if the weather requires it. We are looking forward to hosting this global celebration of all things winter. No matter the temperature, the snow must go on!” said Robin Anthony-Evenson, President of the Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce.

Afton Alps, an east metro ski hill, already has snow machines set up in Stillwater to help with the snowmaking.