The world’s largest igloo was completed over the weekend at Zermatt and has officially entered the Guinness Book of Records.
It took a team of 14 people from Igloo Villages approximately 2,000 hours over 11 days and nights to build the mega-igloo on Gornergrat / Rotenboden in the glacier paradise situated above Zermatt.
The igloo, which was built to mark the 20th anniversary of Igloo Villages in Switzerland, has a diameter of 12,9 meters and an interior height of 9,92 meters.
The building phase for this extraordinary project began on January 10, 2016. The goal was to build the world’s largest igloo within 14 days from 1,387 blocks of snow but whilst exact planning and preparation were one thing, the uncertain snow and weather conditions were another.
Building the igloo at an altitude of 2,727 meters above sea level became a constant challenge for the team, particularly in snow storms and when temperatures dropped to minus 24° C. But the team of builders, who were sponsored by Volvo, proved to be weatherproof. The snow was pushed together with Pistenbullys so that precisely measured blocks could be subsequently cut out using a power saw.
The project was headed up by Adrian Günter, the founder of Igloo Villages, who commented,
“Everything went smoothly and the construction team was highly motivated even though it was sometimes hard to work day and night, even during snow storms and at very low temperatures. We are very pleased and proud to have set the world record.”
The impressive snow construction is open to the public daily from 10am to 5pm until the end of the winter season.
Iglu-Dorf (Igloo Villages) has been building hotels out of snow and ice for 20 years. Amidst wonderful mountain scenery amazing snow palaces emerge every winter at seven locations including in Davos-Klosters, Gstaad, Engelberg, Stockhorn and Zermatt in Switzerland, atop the Zugspitze in Germany and in Andorra in the Pyrenees.
