Picture Perfect - What's it like in an Ice Palace?
Updated: Feb 5, 2025
Have you ever wanted to explore a castle? What about a castle of ice—like in Disney’s Movie: Frozen? Do you remember the first scene of that movie where a team of men are harvesting ice in the mountaintops? They sing a song called: “Frozen Heart” that goes a little something like this:
“Born of cold and winter air
And mountain rain combining
This icy force both foul and fair
Has a frozen heart worth mining
So cut through the heart, cold and clear
Strike for love and strike for fear
See the beauty, sharp and sheer
Split the ice apart
And break the frozen heart
Beautiful! Powerful! Dangerous! Cold!
Ice has a magic, can't be controlled
Stronger than one, stronger than ten
Stronger than a hundred men!”
Midway Utah has a legendary tourist attraction at the base of their mountains that “has a frozen heart worth mining!” Fulfilling that reputation—even just in the name—The Midway Ice Castles will leave you no-longer wondering what it’s like to explore a palace of ice, because there you do not feel like a tourist, but like ice royalty!
What is it?
Like you can probably guess, The Ice Castles are giant formations of ice containing frozen courtyards, brilliant ice sculptures, slippery slides, snow-covered caves, and winter-white throne rooms. It has enclosed mazes to get lost in, ice props to take pictures with, flame thrower shows to gawk at, 50-foot slides to race your friends on, beautiful light combinations, igloo hideouts for children, cozy firepit rest areas, and so much more.
History
At the mythical entrance of the frozen attraction, there stands a placard that reads:
“Once upon a time, in a magical, snowy land called Alpine, Utah a loving father turned his front yard into an icy fairytale world for his kids. Day after day, laughter and joy multiplied as children from all over town came to play in the frozen front yard kingdom. The kids affectionately called it the ‘Ice Castle.’ All from a father’s love, magic and wonder were created and Ice Castles was born. Today, Ice Castles brings that same magic and wonder to kids and kids of heart every winter.”
Are you a kid or a kid at heart? Or are you interested in how the Ice Castles were crafted? Or maybe, are you seeking for the “picture perfect” location for a date, family night, or social media post? If you answered yes to any of these questions, this attraction will give you chills… LITERALLY!
How it’s made
With a team of around 30 skilled artists, and an incredible timeline of just 4-6 weeks, metal structures are sprayed with water to craft over 12,000 “home-made” icicles a day, which are then taken and placed strategically to form walls, arches, and rooms. Every night, another layer of water is added to the structures and the grounds on which you walk. For your safety, the hanging icicles are thoughtfully crafted so that they start melting from the tip. This means that they will not fall, they’ll only drip slowly at their ends.
Through this unbelievable creation process, the walls get up to ten feet thick and the ice under your feet (which is crushed up every morning for traction and tourist convenience) gets up to six feet deep every year. On average, when you visit the Ice Castles, you will be surrounded by 25 million pounds of ice. MILLION! This being said, it takes two to four months for the ice to melt away. The Ice Castles are so big and popular, in fact, that there are now five total locations where they are built: Utah, New Hampshire, Minnesota, and two in Colorado.
If you think just hearing about it is cool, go explore it! It took my wife and I an hour and a half just to see everything—and even then we didn’t feel like we had seen it all.
The Magic
One of my main goals in life is to be a book author. Whenever I do anything, anywhere, I will ask myself: “How could this be a book?” or “How might this setting/action be an inspiration for what I am writing?” Years of this process has taught me that there are a lot of things in life that are just mundane and limit the possibilities of imagination. I can also tell you that The Ice Castles in Midway, UT, was not one of those; quite the contrary. As I strolled the frozen corridors with my sweetheart, I pictured us as prince and princess of an ice kingdom. I pictured nations and tribes coming from all corners of the earth to take part in our winter ball in the royal courts, surrounded by dazzling architecture to which only we were entitled. It was magical. The Ice Castles are a place of wildest imaginations and wondrous creativity—It's a village of art.
In my exploration of the Ice Castles, I paid special attention to the looks on everyone’s faces around me and I can confidently say that each of them were wearing excited smiles. I could feel the energetic emotions of the crowd and even experienced immense joy myself as my wife and I raced down the ice slides—also wearing excited smiles on our faces. And I will say: anything that creates opportunities for me and my best friend to share a smile is what I consider magical.
My favorite part was exploring the ice tunnels and taking amazing pictures of our journey. We even got so “into it” that we crawled on our hands and knees through the hideouts meant for children—and that’s really saying something because I have a bad knee but I wanted to do it anyway.
In retrospect, The Ice Castles were breath-taking to look at and thrilling to be a part of; besides, it isn’t every day you can daydream in a frozen palace. Just like those harvesters in Frozen say: “Beautiful! Powerful! Dangerous! Cold! Ice has a magic that can't be controlled.”
When you come to The Ice Castles “See the beauty, sharp and sheer,” you will find only picture-perfectness here.
So go see The Ice Castles before you have to wait a whole year… but if you really can't, it's worth the wait!
- Cale K. Montoya
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