Family Fun at the Juupajoki Snow Sculpture Competition 2024

As regular readers/followers will recall, I have covered the Juupajoki snow sculpture competition on numerous occasions over the years, however, this year the opportunity arose for me to attend it in person, which I was delighted about.

The family friendly event which is supported by the municipality of Juupajoki, takes place on a Saturday and attracted a large number of visitors who were there to watch 20 excavator operators get creative with their machines and a pile of frozen snow.

The event is largely organized by local entrepreneurs/contractors from around the Juupajoki area, a large volunteer group and young people of the local 4H society, which is a youth organization with almost 45,000 members across the country.

The competition is organised in two sections, operator with only his machine and the other category is operator with assistant and hand tools.

The youngest competitor was Hugo Rentto who is just 10 years old, and was running a Yanmar Vio 80 midi excavator.

There were machines of all shapes and sizes, and different ages but all with one goal, to wow the judges with their snowy creations.

The winner of the solo operator section was Risto Kantola operating the 36-tonne class Liebherr R 936 Compact hydraulic excavator, that he drives for Vantaa, Helsinki, based VM Suomalainen, who created his “Juupajoki wolf”. 
This was Risto's third appearance at the competition and the first time he has walked away with the winners award. 

I will be reporting on the event in a lot more detail in a future edition of Earthmovers Magazine, but in the meantime, for a flavour of it all, checkout my video clip below.