Awesome Ice

Next time your serve up a cocktail, drop a tiny human skull in, then let it gradually melt like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. This two-part silicone tray lets you make four 2″ x 2.36″ skulls at a time, and is great not only for water, but for fruit juice, jello, or candy skulls.

(PG-13) While Hot Ones gradually ramps up the pain with its interviews, Jujimufu’s Ice Bath Chat cuts right to the chase, dunking its subjects into a bathtub filled with ice water. In this clip, bodybuilder Antoine Vaillant attempts to fend off the effects of hypothermia.

Watch as a Russian off-road vehicle called a Sherp rolls effortlessly over a partially-frozen lake, seemingly defying physics by not sinking through the softened ice. Apparently it has something to do with the vehicle’s paddle boat tires. See more Sherp antics here.

We had to go way back in the wayback machine to dig up this clip, but it’s too good not to share if you missed it. Watch as The Hellacopters drummer Robert Eriksson performs a solo on a set of custom-carved ice drums. They play surprisingly well – except the cymbals.

After building a functional LEGO snowblower, The Brick Wall shows off another amazing custom LEGO machine. This one can smooth out lumpy, snow-covered ice and make it slick enough for minifigs to skate on.

When they’re not crushing things with their hydraulic press, Lauri and Anni are fooling around in the snowy countryside of Finland. This week, they managed to create a single-person hot tub made entirely from ice. The color of that hot water is more than a bit sketchy.

Tony Fisher knows a thing or two about making Rubik’s Cubes. After all, he’s the guy behind the world’s largest working cube, and has also built all kinds of complex variants. Here, he shows off a fully-functional puzzle that he made using ice. Hopefully, he’ll work out a color version.

You’ll want to turn the volume up to get the most out of this clip, in which a frozen lake in Nevis, Minnesota makes some strange and unexpected sounds as chunks of ice crack and move. You might think it sounds like Star Wars, but us real geeks know it’s Tempest.

If you like making cocktails, you’d probably love to have those clear ice cubes they have at fancy bars. This slick kit from Wintersmiths gives you the tools you need to make crystal clear ice, and offers several molds for making spheres, cubes, and other shapes with ordinary tap water.

British Olympic Skier Graham Bell had the brass balls to skitch behind a speeding Jaguar XF Sportbrake on the ice in Arjeplog, Sweden, setting a new record for fastest towed speed on skis – an average of 189 km/h or about 117 mph.

Keep your drinks chill with a big Millennium Falcon ice cube thanks to this fun silicone ice mold. The dual mold makes a pair of intergalactic freighters, guaranteed to make the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs – assuming “Kessel Run” is just the name of a cocktail.

The Yaket Ice is much larger than existing ice packs – it covers the entire height and width of most beverage cans. Its cooling fluid also freezes at up to -15ºC/5ºF in 36h, so you can expect your drinks to stay cold for up to 12h.

Fortunately winter appears to finally be behind us, so we can now enjoy Jason Paul’s icy parkour video without thinking about having to scrape frost off our car windows. The clip was shot at Harbin, China, which turns into a frozen winterland once a year.

In 1914, Ernest Shackleton and team set out to cross Antarctica by boat. They ran into ice, and were stranded for 634 days. He helped save his entire crew, but never finished his mission. 100 years later, his great-grandson completed the task in a tricked-out Hyundai Sante Fe.

Subaru recently asked rally driver Mark Higgins to perform an insane stunt – driving a WRX STI down (and up) the Olympic bobsled run in St. Moritz. Along the way, the car took a few bumps and scrapes, but the driving was top-notch given the extremely tight course.

We flew to Arjeplog, Sweden to drive some of Jaguar and Land Rover’s awesome cars on challenging ice circuits, and spent the better part of a week going sideways and doing donuts. Attend for yourself, and you might even catch a glimpse of the Northern Lights.