Wheeling through winter to North America’s only ice hotel

By Stephanie Wallcraft

There are many things Quebec can lay claim to, and the ability to embrace winter in all its beautiful, bracing glory is toward the top of that list. Life doesn’t slow down in Quebec when the snow flies. If anything, there’s just as much to do. It feels like a defiance of the cold’s attempt to force us into hibernation. Mon pays, ce n’est pas un pays, c’est l’hiver, as Quebec songwriter Gilles Vigneault’s famous song lyric goes. My country is not a country, it is winter.

It's fitting, then, that just outside the provincial capital of Quebec City — where more than 300 centimetres of snow falls annually and temperatures rarely tip above freezing for three months of the year — is where North America’s only ice hotel is built. The Hôtel de Glace celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2025, and we decided the perfect way to mark the occasion would be to load up a 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV and try braving the overnight chill for ourselves.

About the 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV

The Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV is well-equipped for Canadian lifestyles. It’s a plug-in hybrid, which means it has both a gas engine and a battery on board. This allows it to drive for up to 61 kilometres on electric power alone, more than enough for the average Canadian to complete a daily commute without using a drop of gasoline. Plug the Outlander PHEV in overnight, and it will be ready to provide the electric driving again the next day.

And when you’re looking to embark on a long-distance road trip like this, which saw us drive for eight hours from Toronto to Quebec City, the gas engine means you’re not dependent on charging stations to keep you going. If you’d like to dip your toes into electric driving but aren’t completely sure EV life is for you, the Outlander PHEV is a great way to test the waters.

It also comes with Mitsubishi’s Super All-Wheel Control system, which is one of the better all-wheel drive systems around. This system can not only distribute power between the front and rear axles but can also balance it between the left and right wheels. From Quebec City’s snow-covered streets to muddy cottage driveways and everything in between, Super All-Wheel Control is ready to tackle Canadian conditions.

Click here to read a full review of the 2025 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV.

Exploring Old Quebec

On the night before our reservation at the Hôtel de Glace, we stayed in Quebec City. This gave us the morning to explore historic Old Quebec, the only walled city left on the continent north of Mexico. It’s one of the most historically rich cities in Canada.

It’s a joy to walk through these centuries-old cobblestone streets. The city’s cliffside centrepiece, the stunning Fairmont le Château Frontenac, is the most photographed hotel in the world. In winter, taking a ride on the toboggan slide next door at Au 1884 is an essential and quintessentially Canadian experience.

With a ride down the cliffside on the funicular railway, you’re wandering through the streets of Lower Quebec, popping into locally owned shops and enjoying maple taffy poured on snow as a sweet treat. Whether you’ve got a few hours or a few days to explore Quebec City, there’s always something new to discover.

En route to Village Vacances Valcartier

The Hôtel de Glace is built each year on the grounds of the Village Vacances Valcartier, located 30 minutes north of Quebec City. This year-round resort is billed as North America’s largest winter playground. It offers more than two dozen snow tubing runs, an indoor water park, a Nordic spa, an arcade, on-site restaurants and more.

If sleeping in a hotel made entirely of ice is not your thing, you can opt for a self-guided tour during the day instead. When the build begins each November, more than 30,000 tons of snow are used to create an amazing work of art. It’s assembled by roughly 50 people, including 15 professional ice sculptors and more than 30 workers, and many walls and surfaces are carved with intricate themed designs.

The structure is made with unique molds designed to help it support its own weight. Apart from the impressive chandelier in the main lobby, the ice hotel needs no structural support within its walls at all. Many of the hotel suites are styled with themes, meaning you could find yourself sleeping in a snowy garden, a mad scientist’s lab, or an icy recreation of downtown Quebec City itself. You can even enjoy a drink at the bar in a cocktail glass made of ice!

The ice hotel stays open for self-guided tours until 9 p.m., but you don’t need to wait that long for the fun to begin. With an overnight stay at the Hôtel de Glace, you also have access to a suite inside the resort. This gives you a secure place to shower and store your belongings, and a retreat in case you’d prefer to escape the cold.

We arrived for our reservation, checked into our resort room, and then headed out for some exhilaration on the tubing runs before grabbing a bite to eat at one of the resort’s restaurants.

Staying overnight at the Hôtel de Glace

Once the hotel closed to daytime visitors, we headed down to relax in the hot tubs and sauna reserved for overnight guests. It’s highly recommended to spend some time here before settling in for the night to bring up your body’s core temperature. And it definitely works: by the time we dried off, changed and settled into the cold-rated sleeping bags provided by the hotel, we stayed toasty warm all night. It was -13 degrees Celsius when we woke up, but while we were snug in our beds, we hardly felt it at all.

Staying overnight in an ice hotel is a unique, surprising and definitively northern experience. And while there’s no question it requires embracing winter like a Quebecer, it’s invigorating and not nearly as frigid as you might imagine it to be. This winter road trip is as Canadian as it comes, and it’s one you’ll remember for a lifetime.