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Sneak Peek At Float Welded by Students for Alpenfest’s Parade

Inspired students from Kirtland Community College welded a giant version of a flower wreath for this year’s Alpenfest parade.

The wreath, also known as a blumenkranz, is the theme for this year’s festival. Hundreds of hours of work lead to its construction for Saturday’s parade.

Ryan Jacob worked on the project with his friend, Jeff.  

“We kind of drew it on a piece of paper and went out and measured it up against a truck to see what kind of size we wanted to do,” he says. “Then we ordered up the steel and started cutting away.”

They used materials donated by Gaylord Collision.

Ryan and Jeff started fabrication just three weeks ago, after a suggestion from a staff member.

Kirtland Director Luann Mabarak says it was a group effort.

“When we talked about being in the parade, what would we like to do for the float, we thought well it would be really cool to do something with the blumenkranz,” she says. “It was actually one of my staff members who had the idea of hey, we have a really talented welding department, so could the students, instructors, somebody design and fabricate one?”

And they did—with some trial and error.

“It was definitely a whole new experience,” Ryan says. “We had to do a lot of cutting, re-cutting and tacking it together.”

The end result was an incredible float.

“It was kind of a big time crunch, so to have it done and ready by Saturday, it’s going to be a huge relief off the back,” Ryan says.  

Luann is relieved and excited that it’s ready for the big parade.

“To watch every step of it has been an exciting process, and to see it all together will be really wonderful,” she says. 

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