Winter in McCall is always beautiful, for 10 days each year the small mountain town becomes even more magical when beautiful snow sculptures appear all over town! 

Of course, the 10 days we're talking about is that special time of the year known as McCall Winter Carnival. It's happening January 27-February 5.

Live music, the beer garden, fireworks over Payette Lake and of course, snow sculptures will all be back this year! So will the Mardi Gras Parade, which hasn't happened since 2020 due to COVID-19. (Yup, we got to enjoy it RIGHT before the world got weird.)

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The snow sculptures aren't just works of art, they're also part of the local snow sculpture competition where the artists can score a pretty good chunk of change! Prizes are given for first through fourth place in both Employee/Amateur and Professional Built categories. The top prize in those categories is $2,000. There's also a $500 "People's Choice" award given to one snow sculpture regardless of which category it was entered in.

If you've never been to Winter Carnival, we want to offer this pro-tip. The best time to view the sculptures is on the first weekend of the festival when they're pristine and ready to be judged. We're excited to get to experience that for the first time EVER this year. In the past, the first weekend of Winter Carnival overlapped with the Canyon County Kids Expo which meant we couldn't make the drive until the second weekend.

We may have just had bad luck, but three of the years we went McCall had gotten rain or warm temperatures during the week causing the snow sculptures to look well...kind of sad by the time we got to town. It was still a blast and we always love playing a game of "what did this sculpture used to be?"

We found these 15 Winter Carnival photos in an old iPhone and looking back, they were mysteries that we never solved. Did you happen to go the first weekend that year? Can you PLEASE tell us what they were?

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