Design for Climate Extremes: Snow and Ice

Floods, fires, hurricanes, and heat. Our climate can be harsh, and as 2024 taught us and the opening weeks of 2025 continue to reinforce, our climate continues to grow more severe. We’re quickly learning how to adapt our cities’ infrastructure to handle this reality.

In many places, snow and ice are common. Here in Colorado, the ski season is often 6 months long and beloved. In other places that aren’t accustomed to it, though—where snow storms are deemed “once in a generation”—ice and snow can shut things down and cause dangerous disruptions.

We can’t prevent extreme conditions but we continue to design to protect people and property from them. In fact, in many places, we’re designing to keep people connected with the outdoors even in the depths of winter. Here are some examples:

In Wayzata, Minnesota, the city’s connection with Lake Minnetonka is cherished whether it’s sunny or snowy. The most recent phase of a years-long effort to strengthen the shoreline—the Panoway Lake Street Plaza and Lakewalk—was completed last year, adding 1,200 feet of boardwalk and community docks to the lakeshore. While some years are warmer than others (hello, 2024), the lake is typically frozen from November through April with more than a foot of ice covering the lake. So as we designed the new lakewalk, we replaced the previous stationary docks with floating docks that better adapt to the lake’s freezing and thawing and improve safety and accessibility. Dock bubblers aerate the water, circulating warmer water below the surface and preventing ice from building up and damaging the docks. On the boardwalk, reinforced steel cone-shaped structural elements have also been added to the structural piers to break up the ice as it flows north during the spring thawing process.

It’s a delicate balancing act, though. As Civitas designer Juliana de Affonseca describes: “it’s important to protect the piers and shoreline but critical not to destabilize the ice itself, which—as long as nature cooperates—supports ice fishing and an annual golf tournament that’s held on top of the frozen lake. The ice is an asset to Wayzata, and our goal is to restore natural ecosystems, not disrupt them, even when the winter is harsh.”

With the snow-capped Rocky Mountains within view, the park was ultimately built with the community in mind. The idea was to design a place that gets people outside regardless of the weather and to reinforce the benefits of outdoor recreation. “We set out to make Central Commons Park an ‘every season destination,’ which is authentic to Calgary’s natural environment and culture,” said designer Jessica Doig. “Designing something that encourages people to get out during the coldest times of the year was really rewarding. We know how much nature plays a part in health and wellness and we think this park will help amplify that.”

[photo courtesy of Chinook Blast]

Getting people outside for recreation and socialization was a similar goal of the St. Patrick’s Island project in Calgary. This 30-acre island sits within The Bow River, and hosts numerous activities and events within the park’s amphitheater, trails, picnic grove, playground and more. In the winter, St. Patrick’s Island hosts a pop-up curling rink, a fire pit and toboggan slope, as well as outdoor walks and birding events.

Finally, close to home in Colorado, the Civitas team has been working with CDOT, Collins Engineers and GSG Architecture on the reconstruction of I-70’s Vail Pass Rest Area. Located at an elevation over 10,000 feet, this stretch of the interstate highway is notoriously challenging as it crosses the Rockies. It’s steep and frequently subjected to hazardous weather conditions. The rest area is no different, so the current reconstruction project has aimed to improve traffic circulation, accessibility, safety and connectivity at the site, along with updates to restrooms and other facilities.

A big consideration for snow and ice is sun exposure, so the Vail Pass Rest Area includes a plaza overlook that is south facing to enable its use for (at least) three seasons of the year. Our team also specified permeable pavers so the sun-melted snow will drain and not create puddles that refreeze. Stairs are similarly designed for safety and maintenance without cheek walls on either side, which makes clearing snow much easier. And, as in all of our work, we took care to choose site-specific plants and seed mixes—here, focusing on varieties that can be successful in the high alpine ecosystem.

“In addition to the climate, the site’s location on a steep mountainside is also extreme,” acknowledges Landscape Architect Kyle Hopkins. “So to be able to expand the parking area per CDOT’s needs and put most of the day-to-day parking on one level, including parking for semi-truck rigs, the engineers had to regrade the site with a significant amount of fill and utilize additional structural systems to support paving areas. This was a lot of additional work that is not typical on our projects.” The area also receives well over 200 inches of snow each year and has a summer growing season less than 60 days, which greatly limits construction schedules, especially for site work.

The rest area serves as a popular trailhead for backcountry access year-round, but especially for snowmobiling and backcountry skiing, snowboarding, and snowshoeing in the winter. Just as in each of these projects that address snow and ice, our work prioritizes safe access that keeps people outside in all seasons, doing what they—and we—love in Colorado, Calgary, and beyond.

Above: Vail Pass Rest Area under construction in December 2024, before closing down for winter [photo courtesy of GSG Architecture]

Below: Vail Pass Rest Area site in summer – located at 10,662 ft elevation.