Aurora Ice Museum at Chena Hot Springs Resort
Chena Hot Springs, Alaska, United States
The Aurora Ice Museum is a permanent ice structure, which distinguishes it from almost everything else in this category. Most ice hotels are demolished by their own thaw each spring and rebuilt from scratch each winter; this one is held below freezing year-round by a refrigeration system that is itself powered by the geothermal field the resort sits on. The result is an ice building that exists in July.
It stands within Chena Hot Springs Resort, sixty miles east of Fairbanks at the end of a road that runs out shortly afterwards. The resort proper is a conventional collection of lodge rooms and cabins, heated by the same geothermal source, with hot spring pools that stay open through the Alaskan winter. The ice structure is a separate building: carved interiors, an ice bar, sculptural work renewed as it sublimates away.
Overnight stays inside the ice are limited and conditional, and most visitors tour it and sleep in a heated room — which is the sensible arrangement. The reason to make the drive between roughly late August and April is the aurora, which the resort's latitude and darkness serve well. It is a working demonstration of geothermal engineering that happens to be beautiful, and the ice is a consequence of that rather than a gimmick added to it.