These dazzling Alberta Ice Castles are straight out of a winter fairy tale

Every year, there is another winter wonderland popping up around Canada ready to challenge for the most magical experience of the season. It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly is the coolest winter experience in the country, but the Edmonton Ice Castles are definitely hard to beat.

Ice Castles is an award-winning frozen attraction created by Brent Christensen. He originally wanted to build an ice cave for his young daughter but soon enough the idea became something bigger.

The first Ice Castles installation lived on his front lawn in Alpine, Utah, and ended up attracting hundreds of locals coming by to check it out.

Related Posts:
The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is more photogenic than ever this season
A Canadian fashion company just dropped a designer dog clothing line

Next, Christensen expanded the ice caves into Ice Castles, et voila, the magical experience was born! With locations popping up in Colorado, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire, it made sense to bring the frozen delight north of the border. And boy, oh boy, they sure don’t disappoint.

The Edmonton Ice Castles is built using hundreds of thousands of icicles that are hand-placed by professional artists. The process takes thousands of man-hours, requiring around 10,000 icicles to be grown and harvested daily. Obviously, hard work pays off because this place is spectacular.

The Castles include stunning LED-lit sculptures, frozen thrones, ice-carved tunnels, slides, fountains and much more. Plus, it’s one of the most Instagrammable winter displays we’ve ever seen.

This is only the 5th time the Ice Castles have been in Canada, so let’s hope it becomes a permanent winter addition. Maybe a few other cities could use this frozen installation too? We’ll keep our fingers crossed on that.

Hawrelak Park Edmonton Ice Castles

Where: Edmonton, Alberta