It's 7:30 a.m. in the middle of January. The dashboard reads negative three degrees and thick snow is falling. Individual students scurry to drill, blurring into generic life forms under layers of hoodies, scarves, and down jackets. You’re at Dartmouth College and this is business as usual.

Unusual for this time of year, however, were last week’s balmy temperatures and the accompanying student body whose bare skin showed off fresh tans. Now students straggle to class or breakfast, accepting the slushy four inches of white gunk beneath their Uggs as winter’s signature introduction. But that doesn’t mean all is well in Wonderland. Lacking the head start on winter weather we’re accustomed to at Dartmouth, some students worry that Dartmouth's 97th Winter Carnival Snow Sculpture might indeed go Down the Rabbit Hole.

The plan – a White Rabbit midway down a ski jump – will certainly test Dartmouth students’ abilities to turn a pittance of snow into an imposing sculpture. Winter Carnival contributing artist since 2004, Victoria Solbert '07, recalled how difficult building the sculpture proved in 2006. Given the current weather, Victoria predicted that this year’s Alice in Wonderland theme will be even more challenging. Despite predicting hours of dedication by students, Solbert says the weather may have already made it “physically impossible to keep the sculpture.” Fearful that they might be the first class to see the end to the venerable Dartmouth tradition, many freshmen and seniors have been heard muttering threats never to spend another winter in the northeast; one student compared the possibility of no snow sculpture to “the death of Santa Clause.”

However, Dartmouth has overcome similar obstacles in the past to secure that “ephemeral work of art” mid-Green. Last year – cursed (or blessed) with the lightest snowfall anyone can remember – ninety-five percent of the 275 square yards of snow needed to build the sculpture was trucked in from surrounding areas: seventy percent coming from the Sculley-Fahey Lacrosse Field and the remaining twenty-five percent from the Camion Ice Rink one mile down Route 10. Winter Carnival Committee Chair Dan Schneider ’07 smiled confidently when asked about where the building blocks of the snow sculpture would come from, insisting the statue will stand in 2007, although it “may not be a hundred percent snow.”

On a recent drive around the Green I realized that what I had originally mistook for snow was actually an accumulation of huge boulders of ice, likely scavenged, marking the first efforts toward building this year’s Winter Carnival sculpture. Since 1910 the student-built monuments have become the Green's winter centerpiece and the soul of Winter Carnival, revving school spirit for winter ski team races and a weekend of revelry. And in recent history, the sculpture has substituted as the school’s mascot when the Big Green proved far too impotent.

Every year, the process of building the statue itself proves a team effort that unites the student body. Over two hundred Dartmouth students, from Greek Houses and athletic teams alike, led by students involved in the Dartmouth Outing Club, work together to create a twenty-five foot tower of ice and snow. For three weeks, they brave sleep deprivation and hypothermia to build the snow statue. Schneider estimates it will take two and a half weeks to collect the snow and another grueling thirty-six to forty-eight hours to carve the resulting block of ice into a masterpiece.

Despite the size of the task, optimism has percolated throughout the campus, especially given the recent snowfall. A participant during all four years of his Dartmouth career, Wiley Bogren ‘07, vowed that even the worst winter ever could not cheat the class of 2010 out of its right to this Dartmouth ritual. “There will be a snow sculpture. It might be a four feet tall snowman,” remarked Wiley. Despite the inconsistent weather patterns, no one, least of all Schneider, has given up on this year’s ski-jumping rabbit in celebration of this year’s Alice and Wonderland theme. “The snow sculpture kind of takes over my life," he explained. With so much on the line, could Dartmouth go without a sculpture this year? “That just won’t happen," Schneider promised.