Ice Castles founder, owner pleased with progress in Cripple Creek

It's still early — the mood can swing with the temperatures — but the Ice Castles boss is sounding pleased about conditions and progress in the attraction's first year of construction in the hills west of Colorado Springs.

Based in Utah, Ice Castles founder and owner Brent Christensen said he has been in constant contact with crew leaders in Cripple Creek. Recent photos have shown walls of stacked icicles soaring overhead — colorful, LED-embedded walls to encase a frozen "fairytale" of tunnels, slides and arches. From Bennett Avenue, the bluish formation can be seen rising on a not-so-distant knoll.

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Compared with Ice Castles' other locations in Utah, Wisconsin, Minnesota, New York and New Hampshire, Cripple Creek "is ahead of the game," Christensen said.

Which is what he's come to expect from Colorado.

"When you go to a place over 9,000 feet in elevation, we're hopeful it's going to be cold," Christensen said. "Sure enough, (Cripple Creek) has lived up to our hopes so far."

Colorado's elements have been desired since 2021, when complications ended an Ice Castles run in Summit County. Cripple Creek emerged to accommodate the company's needs for space, water and electric. 

Freezing temperatures are also needed to farm icicles and stack them by spraying water. Those temperatures have delivered in recent days and weeks, Christensen said.

"I have to preface any time I say anything," he said. "It's going great now, but we just don't know what's going to happen in a week."

For Wednesday and Thursday, Cripple Creek's forecast shows highs in the 60s and lows never below 20 degrees.

"That's not good for us. We're definitely going to be melting," Christensen said.

It's happened in other locations, he said: a complete collapse and rebuild.

"Really not in Colorado, though," he said. "It would take a lot of days in the 50s to melt it to where we'd have to start over."

Desired temperatures around or below 20 degrees are forecast to return to Cripple Creek over the weekend — more promising hours for builders to work toward the company's stated hope of opening late this month or early January.

For now, the earliest tickets posted online (starting at $27 for adults) are for Jan. 13. That date represents "pretty good confidence that by then we're going to be open," Christensen said.

"The closer we get to the holidays, traditionally the colder the weather gets. So our progress could speed up exponentially," he said. "But right now, we're maybe a third or a quarter of the way there."

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A Christmas debut is always a "lofty" goal," he said. New Year's is a better bet, he said, but still "fairly early." And if anyone's betting on Ice Castles' six locations, "typically in Colorado you open first," he said.

The operation is anticipated to last seven or eight weeks between January and February, Christensen said.

Last year showcased the variability across locations: Utah's 10 weeks were the company's best-ever, Christensen said, while Wisconsin's and New York's castles stood less than a week, a company worst. That led to some re-thinking: Those two locations are now being called "Winter Realms," creations from snowmaking, which doesn't require as cold of temperatures.

Christensen said he's noticed changes since the turn of the century, around the time he sprayed his home hose and built a frozen wonderland for his kids. Ice Castles first moved from his yard to Midway, Utah, in 2011.

When it comes to temperature changes, "it's not necessarily the highs or the lows" he said he's noticed, "but more so these crazy fluctuations during the course of a winter."

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