PITY THE POOR FLATLANDERS:

NORTH WOODSTOCK, N.H. -- There are several challenges with attempting to build a fully functional pub out of snow and ice, but Brent Christensen is the right man for the job. He is also the wrong man for the job, considering he's a Mormon from Utah and doesn't drink.

"What do you think?" he asked me a few times as he worked out the layout of the bar he was constructing inside a giant igloo. I suspect he was asking to be nice, and not because I was familiar with bars, or that I had already bragged that I once tried to build a snowman that was a scale model of one of those heads on Easter Island (uncompleted).

Before meeting Christensen, I felt myself drawn to what he had done. I love an overboard dad, especially when they carry a joke too far, and I can think of few who went as far as Christensen.

"I was just trying to amuse my kids, and then ..." he gestures here toward the 20-million-pound ice castle under construction a couple of dozen yards away in this White Mountains village. "It got out of hand."

Christensen is the man behind Ice Castles, the mega-popular attraction that is celebrating its 10th winter in New Hampshire. What started with some ice caves and slides in his Utah yard has since grown into a winter amusement empire with hundreds of employees at Ice Castles in five states -- each of them constructed entirely of snow and ice using a now-patented method that Christensen stumbled upon in 2011.

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