LaBelle Lake Ice Palace open for business
If you’ve ever wanted to experience an ice palace like one in the movie “Frozen,” you don’t have to go very far. Located just north of Rigby, the LaBelle Lake Ice Palace opened for business this weekend.
It’s a series of large ice designs, some you can walk through, some you can sit on and others you can just admire.
“You light it up and it’s just, it’s gorgeous,” Kira Martin, manager of the LaBelle Lake Ice Palace, said. “Putting the colors behind it and it makes you feel like you’re in a whole different world.”
The owners pulled out all the stops for the grand opening Friday night, including a man who eats fire. They also plan on having Elsa and Olaf for future nights. So how does one build an ice palace? First, you start with plastic sleeves.
“We filled those plastic sleeves with water to make ice pillars, chainsawed the ice pillars,” Martin said. “We had to put all of the pillars up and then we used icicles [ Editor’s note: Martin wished to clarify that these were smaller pre-made ice pillars, not icicles ] that we also made and used slush as like a concrete and kind of hooked them all together. And then on the spots that have passage ways, we had to put a roof on there and then we turned the sprinkler system on. That’s when it started solidifying everything.”
The owners of the ice palace recently opened LaBelle Lake to host weddings and retreats as well as other events. It’s a big attraction during the warm months, so they wanted something for the winter time, and they found it. They’re already making plans for next year’s ice palace.
“There’s so many things I’d do differently than I did this year,” Jim Youngstrom, owner and creator of LaBelle Lake Ice Palace, said. “So, yeah next year I’d love to, my imagination just takes off with it. So I think it’ll be awesome next year.”
Youngstrom says he does it all for people to enjoy.
“I love doing things that make other people happy, that’s where my satisfaction comes from,” he said. “So just seeing the people enjoy it, that makes it all worth it.”
The ice palace is open from 6 to 9 pm on week nights and 6 to 10 pm on weekends. It is closed on Sundays.
