Copper Mountain has received a lot of snow this year — enough to get lost in, and not just on the slopes.

Copper’s free Snow Maze — which started out as a pile of more than 50,000 cubic feet of snow — has 7-foot tall walls and incorporates 9,000 pounds of ice, according to Keith Martin, the owner of Snice Snow & Ice Carvings. 

This is the third year that the Snice team has constructed the Snow Maze at Copper. The maze is located directly adjacent to the snow tubing hill near the Superbee chair in East Village.

“Each year we get a little bit bigger and a little bit more thoughtful on our artistic flare,” Martin “This particular year we have a pirate ship theme. We have a Kraken pulling down the pirate ship and a deserted island that has palm trees and a treasure chest.”

Explorers who enter the maze will find themselves “a little turned around” as they navigate its twists and turns, Martin said. This year, the Snice team added a couple of loops to the maze, “so you can actually walk around in a circle, and not even realize it,” he said. “It gives another new dimension of getting yourself turned around.”

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Along the inside of the maze, artwork carved by the Snice team can lend clues to wanderers who may have become discombobulated, Martin said. And children who conquer the maze will be rewarded with ice slides to slip down, he said.

Also, the end of the maze ramps up, so “you kinda get a view over the top of the maze, so you get a little bit of appreciation of the design and what you’re actually walking through, the size of it,” Martin said.

How does the Snice team create the labyrinth? Well, it all starts with having a lot of snow to work with.

“The how-its-built process is really interesting to people,” Martin said. “It’s not a normal thing that anybody sees any different place. Obviously, Summit County and Copper have the snow to do it right.”

On day one of constructing the Snow Maze, Martin said he worked with Copper’s snowcat and snowmaking team. He worked with the snowcats for four to six hours to arrange the snow into a huge pile, approximately 120 feet long, 70 feet wide and 8 feet tall.

The next day, Martin said he and a few other Snice crew members come in and start digging trenches to create an outline of the maze. Then, a couple of excavators and skid steers are brought in to start moving the snow around, he said.

Soon, the Snice team starts to map the maze out in a giant grid, and an artist is brought in to create the artwork on the front walls, Martin said. Next, trenchers start digging out the maze’s dizzying hallways, he said.

“I like to consider it a giant chess game,” Martin said. “We have to do everything in such a way that we don’t pack ourselves into a corner. We have quite a lot of equipment working in one spot. Safety is our No. 1 concern.”

While the Snice team has been working on plans for the Snow Maze since July, construction of the maze itself took a crew of about 18 people nine days to complete back in early January, Martin said. The maze typically remains up for a little over three months until Mother Nature begins to melt the snow, he said. The Snice crew returns about once a month to touch up the artwork.

“This year’s maze is the best one yet,” Copper Mountain communications manager Olivia Butrymovich said in a statement.

The maze is free for guests to check out, but visitors must sign a waiver using a QR code at the entrance of the maze in order to enter. Those exploring the maze are asked not to climb the walls or rough house.

“Watching the kids do circles in it and get all excited. Watching them get all bummed out and angry at their parents when it’s time to leave. Those are the really, really cool precious moments to us that we get to take to our heart and carry into the design,” Martin said. “It doesn’t get any better than watching a kid with a smile on his face from ear to ear or watching an older adult have that childlike feeling once again.”