Edmonton’s Ice Castle is slowly coming together again this year, despite not getting a lot of help from Mother Nature.
A warm spell earlier this month delayed its opening by at least a week and now, crews are fighting through a cold snap. Ice Castles co-founder Ryan Davis says they usually aim to open around Christmas, but now they are targeting Jan. 5.
“When the cold weather comes, we’re always really grateful,” Davis said on Thursday. “Just before the cold snap, through the warmup, that was rough. We were probably a week away from being ready to open and then it really warmed up, so it slowed us down quite a bit.”
Before the warm weather, Davis thought they could have been ready to open by Dec. 20.
In an outdoor ice castlemaker’s perfect world, the thermometer would read somewhere between -5 C and -12 C.
“That’s our sweet spot,” Davis said. “When it gets really cold like this — we make ice with running water and so the ice will tend to freeze wherever it hits — so creating icicles, you have to change your plan a little bit.”
“We end up adding more volume to the water, so that it will still get some cascading icicles,” Davis said. “With water pressure and things like that, it actually — surprisingly enough — slows us down a little bit when the temperatures really drop. There’s still a lot to do at this phase when we’re getting the walking surface ready, so it doesn’t slow us down too much. But it seems like that’s just… life — there’s always a little bit of a challenge, there’s truly not a perfect spot.”
This is the third year for the Ice Castle in Edmonton. Davis says they are going with a new design, promising to give visitors the sense of “almost escaping into the ice” with plenty of tunnels and slides, new fountains and new lighting effects. It will also be in a new location in Hawrelak Park, closer to the skating pond.
“I think it will be one of the prettiest places in North America to ice skate, with the Ice Castle right behind it.”
Ice Castles is also expanding to a second Canadian city this year, Winnipeg, which is enjoying a similar cold snap to Edmonton.
“We love the weather up north,” Davis said, chuckling.
Davis expects the Winnipeg Ice Castle will also open on Jan. 5.
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