The snow sculptures are a bit late but the cheese carving should be right on schedule.

Festival du Voyageur has had to truck in snow for sculpting purposes, because not enough had fallen in time. Executive director Darrel Nadeau says usually the snow sculptures around Winnipeg are up by mid-January.

After introducing wood carving last year, this year's festival features another new medium: cheddar cheese. Nadeau says the cheese carving showdown is set for February 18th from noon to 4. He says they put the cheese challenge out to the snow sculpters they've got, and six of them said yes.

"It'll be an international cheese carving competition of sorts, with a few folks from different parts around the world, carving some cheese over... four hours," he says.

Nadeau says food samples will be available as well. He's not sure what the plan is with the carved cheese yet, but the door's not closed on potentially eating some of the creations.

"It's one of those things that you certainly wouldn't want to eat the outside of it just because of the tools being used to carve, but, you know, I'm a small town guy, and whenever the outside of the cheese block would go bad you'd still cut (off) the outside and still eat the inside, right? So I'm sure that if we really, really wanted to we could do something with that cheese."

The competitors will be carving 40-pound blocks of cheddar, says Nadeau.

Festival runs February 16th to the 25th.