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Ullr Fest, snow sculpture events officially canceled in Breckenridge

 

DILLON — Ullr Fest and the Breckenridge Snow Sculpture Invitational won’t happen this winter.

Town Manager Rick Holman said the town and Breckenridge Tourism Office staff made the recommendation to cancel the events, which Breckenridge Town Council agreed to at its Tuesday meeting.

Tourism office CEO and President Lucy Kay said the organization came to the conclusion while the county was still in level orange on the state’s COVID-19 dial. And now that Summit is in level red, she said staff is even more emphatic about the decision.



“There’s just no way it makes sense today,” Kay said during the meeting. “Everybody’s supportive, everybody’s on board with this position. We all want to do the right thing.”

The Tourism Office previously had planned to scale back both events for safety reasons during the pandemic.



For Ullr Fest, the organization had planned Ten Days of Ullr from Dec. 9-19, featuring a “gallery of stationary art installations” dispersed around town in place of the parade, a scavenger hunt and a virtual Ullr king and queen coronation, according to the Breckenridge Events Committee.

The International Snow Sculpture Championships were set to be replaced by the Breckenridge Snow Sculpture Invitational from Jan. 26 to Feb. 7, which would have featured four to five small-scale sculptures dispersed around town.

“I think our goal was to try to remain agile and have the ability to cancel events if need be on short notice,“ Holman said Tuesday, referring to previous discussions about the possibility of canceling the events. ”And any event, even as we were looking at the reimagined snow sculptures and Ullr, everybody knew upfront that nothing was set in stone.“

The Lighting of Breckenridge countdown and Race of the Santas events also have been canceled, according to an email from Breckenridge Tourism Office spokesperson Austyn Dineen.

Despite the lighting cancellation, Dineen wrote that there still will be 250,000 holiday lights hung throughout downtown Breckenridge. The lights will turn on during the first weekend in December. The town also will have a festival of holiday trees along the Blue River Recpath.

“With the goal of dispersing downtown guests from Main Street’s narrow sidewalks and creating some extra outdoor space, a festival of holiday trees, decorated by community businesses, will be added to the Blue River Recpath and remain on display throughout the month of December,” Dineen wrote.

 


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