Another successful season in books and still no progress on lawsuit, Labelle Lake Ice Palace says

LABELLE, Idaho (KIFI)- The last day of the Labelle Lake Ice Palace was Monday evening. Jim Youngstrom, the owner of the company behind the Ice Palace, says it was "a really good year."

He says the end of season is always the hardest part.

"It's just really sad for me to see all this ice. Just like a small ice city and to know it's going to be all back in the ground within the next couple of months," Youngstrom said.

This year, the team behind the Ice Palace took on a new challenge to not only improve previous iterations of the palace but make it bigger something they feel they accomplished.

"This is the most different we've ever done," Youngstrom said. "But we've got like the simple archway with the big walkway coming across with an acoustic room coming over on the other side."

Kira Martin, the Ice Palace's Director, says the addition of the Reindeer gave a special effect to the palace this year, and they'll continue to be a part of the scene.

"They'll grow with the Ice Palace so every year the reindeer will get bigger and bigger and and everyone gets to kind of watch these reindeer grow because they were just born last April," Martin said.

With all the success of the Ice Palace this year, they haven't forgotten about the lawsuit filed against them by a similar company out of Utah.

Youngstrom says this process has taken a lot out of them.

"The lawsuit is just still ongoing," Youngstrom said. "It's been four years of our life that we won't get back."

He says another company based in Maine is also being sued by the same company from Utah. The company in Maine challenged the Utah patent which they subsequently lost.

"We just got a notification from our attorney that it's been rejected a second time," Youngstrom said.

Now Youngstrom, Martin and the rest of the team behind the winter wonderland, hope the trial will take place sometime this year. Until then, they await the inspiration for next years iteration saying it may be a while before they know for sure.

"We really honestly don't know exactly until it's just first coming to us in November. We'll start laying it out and go, 'Oh, we got to do this, let's do this.' And then and then it starts coming together"