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Valent-ICE returns to downtown Grand Rapids for World of Winter

While it's supposed to last over a week, the coming warm weather presents a lot of challenges for the ice sculptures.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Despite the mild weather coming to West Michigan, there's still plenty of frozen fun activities taking place this weekend.

Valent-ICE is one of them, and it's returning to Grand Rapids for the World of Winter festival just in time for Valentine's Day.

The event will showcase dozens of professionally-carved ice sculptures all throughout downtown, and ice guru Randy Finch, along with his team, have been hard at work to prep this year's sculptures.

And the coming warm weather presents a lot of challenges.

"Everybody's happy about it except for me," says Finch. "But I like it because it's not too bad. It gets really cold at night, it's gonna chill off during the day, it's going to be melting, so it's good for people. However, I would get down there early because the ice sculptures will be melting during the day."

Valent-ICE is expected to last from Feb. 10 to Feb. 16.

Times are listed for 8 a.m. until 11 p.m., but there's a warning that it could close early if they all melt, so making the 80,000 pounds of ice last for hours is Finch's main priority.

"The sun tends to chew them up so they don't look as good after two or three days in that type of temperatures. So I would get out there early live demonstration at Rosa Parks circle at noon on Saturday, great time to go out for a date night on Friday night or Saturday night."

Guests can join one of the Ice Sculpture Walking Tours led by Grand Rapids Running Tours to learn the backstories of each sculpture. 

Some of the sculptures are of a dog sled and polar bear chair, and there's also going to be tons of color!

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