Most of the areas where people walk were covered with outdoor carpeting, particularly the steps up the ice buildings. There were, however, a number of places that were just bare ice. The long yellowish-green promenade was pure ice, though there was a central carpeted path. One of the ice balconies also had no carpets and, in some places, there was so much foot traffic that people tracked ice and snow over the carpets were it quickly became solid and slick. There are some shots of the interior of a long igloo-like building where we saw the sliver foxes -- it had no carpets at all and we just went slip-sliding along. This is, of course, China were the occasional slip or slide is considered fun and part-and-parcel of the Ice Festival experience. If this was the US, there were be long rows of lawyers lined up just waiting to file the negligence lawsuits.

Mrs. PTravel did pretty well -- her one stumble (which is in the video and, of course, timed to the music ) was when her boot caught on a piece of carpeting. I had a couple of close calls despite being extra careful because of the camera, though the worst for me was the luge in the beginning of the video. I was shooting with both hands and kept getting bounced up and down on the little sled. I came very close to being thrown out of it altogether and finished the slide on my side. It actually made for a better video because I was able to get shots of the two "catchers" at the bottom of the luge run. That luge was a lot scarier than it looked -- those are Mrs. PTravel's actual screams as she started down the run.

I should note that we were both dressed for the weather, both in terms of warmth and traction. Harbin was fun, but I wouldn't recommend it without very, very warm clothing and even then, as you saw in the video, we both kept our scarves over our faces to keep our cheeks from freezing solid.