The Saranac Lake Winter Carnival

Every February the village of Saranac Lake builds a palace out of ice blocks cut from its own lake and holds a ten-day winter carnival around it, a tradition that goes back to 1897. The 2027 carnival runs from Friday, February 5, to Sunday, February 14, with the theme Wizards and Dragons. The palace stands on Lake Flower, about 43 road miles south of the cabins, roughly an hour's drive, so you can stay for the fireworks and still end the night in the hot tub.

The 2027 carnival

So far the carnival has posted three things for 2027: the dates, February 5 to 14; the theme, Wizards and Dragons; and the Gala Parade, on Saturday, February 13. That is the Saturday of Presidents' Day weekend, because Washington's Birthday falls on Monday, February 15, in 2027. The year also marks 130 years since the first carnival.

Each carnival has a theme, and the theme shapes the ice palace, the parade floats and the button. About 80 suggestions came in for 2027, and the committee cut them to five finalists: Blizzard of Books, Game Night, Vintage Victorian, Wizards and Dragons and Under the Big Top. A vote at the Saranac Lake Elks Lodge, set for April 28, 2026, and open to anyone who came, picked Wizards and Dragons, an idea that had been pitched for about twenty years. The carnival's executive committee keeps the final say. Some ideas never reached the list: themes built on Lego or Disney were dropped over copyright worries. The 2026 theme was Cartoonival, and that palace carried ice carvings of cartoon characters, Bugs Bunny, Snoopy and the Simpsons among them.

In early October 2026 the full 2027 schedule had not been posted. It goes up on the carnival's website before the event, and every event is subject to change. Until then, the 2026 carnival, which ran from February 6 to 15, shows how the ten days usually go.

Races, games, concerts and dances fill the days in between. The lighting usually falls on the first Saturday and the parade on the second, so if you can come only once, pick the first Saturday for the lighting and the fireworks, or the second for the parade.

How the carnival began

The Pontiac Club was formed in Saranac Lake in November 1896 to encourage outdoor sports and games through the long winter. Dr. Edward L. Trudeau, the physician who pioneered the fresh-air cure for tuberculosis in the village, was one of its charter members. On February 17, 1897, the club held a one-day fancy-dress carnival on Flower Lake, with a hockey game in the afternoon and a costume skating party in the evening. It went well enough that the club staged a bigger Pontiac Club Carnival the next winter, on February 1 and 2, 1898, and built the first ice palace for it, a structure people called the Ice Fortress. The 1897 carnival was the debut of organized winter sports in the central Adirondacks, eight years before the Lake Placid Club first stayed open through a winter, in 1904-05. The carnival is billed today as the oldest winter carnival in the eastern United States.

The timing mattered. In the late 1800s and early 1900s Saranac Lake drew patients for the fresh-air cure: rest, cold mountain air and good food. Sanatoria and cure cottages went up all over the village, many with wide porches where patients lay bundled in blankets, breathing deeply. The village leaders behind the Pontiac Club wanted entertainment for the growing number of patients, who could watch even when they could not take part, and the carnival and its palace gave residents, visitors and the thousands of patients curing through those winters something to look forward to. Trudeau's laboratory, built in 1894 after a fire destroyed his smaller one, was the first lab in the United States built for tuberculosis research. Historic Saranac Lake restored it and opened it in 2009 as the Saranac Laboratory Museum on Church Street, with exhibits on the cure years, local science and patient care.

Gaps, revivals and the palace builders

The carnival did not run every winter. Through most of the 1910s and 1920s it was held every other year, in the odd-numbered years. Some winters, such as 1923, 1926 and 1936, had festivities but no palace, and for long stretches during the Depression and the world wars there was no carnival at all. It came back in the winter of 1947-48 and has been held every year since. The palace took longer to return: the last of the early palaces went up in 1924, and the next one in 1955.

The early palaces were built by contractors. The job went out to bid, and ice harvesters who were used to handling ice applied for it. In the 1960s, when paying for the palace became too much, volunteers took over the organizing, the design and the building, and they still do it. The builders call themselves IPW 101, for Ice Palace Workers (Union) 101. Stories differ on where the name came from; one says it began as a joke answer to visitors who kept asking, "Do you get paid to do this?" Look for the letters written in slush on the palace walls.

About a hundred people from the community turn out to help each year. The carnival says anyone can join in, with jobs handed out by comfort, skill and ability, and newcomers often start by packing slush, dressed warm and in rubber gloves. The Women's Civic Chamber brings the crews hot chocolate and coffee every day of the build.

How the palace is built

The palace goes up on the shore of Pontiac Bay on Lake Flower, next to the state boat launch on River Street, and the ice comes out of the lake right behind it. Planning starts in December. For a couple of weeks before the build, volunteers clear the snow off the ice field every day, because bare ice grows thicker. In 2026 the build started on Wednesday, January 21, with work planned right up to the opening on February 6. A cold winter made the ice thicker than usual, and the crews finished ahead of schedule, in less than two weeks. Warm winters push the other way: in 2023 the start came at least a week late, and the blocks were only nine or ten inches thick, about half the thickness of the year before.

The cutting mixes old tools and new. A circular saw adapted to slide along the ice makes the first cuts, and the final cuts are made with handsaws from the lumbering trade, as they were a century ago. Volunteers push the loose blocks along a channel of open water with poles, a job they call poling the blocks, and an excavator lifts them out at the shore. Antique ice tongs are still part of the kit. How much a block weighs depends on the winter: the thin 2023 blocks ran 350 to 400 pounds, thicker ice gives blocks of up to 600 pounds, and in a cold year like 2026 a block can weigh as much as 800. A palace takes anywhere from about 1,000 to 4,000 blocks, depending on the design. The 2023 plan called for about 2,400, and the crews cut roughly 2,700 for the 2026 palace.

The mortar is slush, snow mixed with water, which holds the blocks together. Designs start small: once the theme is set, a group of volunteers meets at a local restaurant and sketches the palace on a napkin, and the sketch becomes blueprints that are kept at the building site. The 2026 palace had a 35-foot tower, a maze and a slide, with kelp and fish frozen into the walls. Every year at least one block turns up with a fish inside, a favorite with children. Once the palace is finished it is lit every night, from the lighting ceremony until it closes.

Visiting the Ice Palace

The palace is free. There is no charge to walk into it or to look at it, and it stays open to the public through the carnival, weather permitting. See it twice if you can: in daylight, when you can follow the saw cuts and the slush seams and look for the fish, and after dark, when the lights come on. If the palace is judged at risk of collapse, it closes to the public, and visitors look on from behind safety barricades.

Plan to see it during the ten days. In 2026 the palace came down right after the carnival ended, for insurance reasons, so do not count on a quiet visit the week after; watch the carnival's website for the 2027 plan.

The ground in and around the palace is packed snow and ice, so wear boots with grip and keep children close. Accessible parking is set aside beside the palace, in the state boat launch lot, for cars with a handicap plate, sticker or hang tag. In 2026 the carnival also held an Ice Palace Accessibility Day, with a free round-trip bus with a wheelchair lift from stops around the village, reserved parking, extra palace hosts and hot drinks and snacks; look for it on the 2027 schedule.

The carnival button

The carnival's fundraiser is a pin. Every year Garry Trudeau, the cartoonist who draws Doonesbury, designs a new themed button for it, and he has done so since 1981. The button sells for $5 at shops around the village and, during the carnival, at the carnival's History Hut and gift shop by the boat launch on River Street, next to the palace grounds.

The palace and the parade cost nothing to see, so the button is the easy way for a visitor to put something toward the carnival. It also makes a good souvenir of the year, since each design follows that winter's theme. Buy it on the way to the palace and wear it on your coat.

Parades, royalty and the Rotary show

The Gala Parade is the main event of the second Saturday, February 13 in 2027. In 2026 it stepped off at 1 p.m. from the firehouse on Broadway and ran to LaPan Highway, free to watch, with bands, creative costumes and the royal floats, and afterward several of the parade bands played again at a sound-off at Harrietstown Town Hall. Find a spot on Broadway by noon on parade day. The carnival also holds a kiddie parade, and among the acts to look for are the Lawn Chair Ladies and their synchronized routines.

Each carnival crowns a king and a queen, and the crowning usually opens the carnival. The Women's Civic Chamber hosts the coronation at Harrietstown Town Hall, and a reception for the royalty follows. The parade carries royal floats, and the royalty and the high school carnival court take the stage at the Rotary show.

The Rotary Club Variety Show is the carnival's night of local acts. In 2026 it was on Friday, February 13, at Harrietstown Town Hall, 39 Main Street, with doors at 6:30 p.m., a pre-show at 7 and the curtain at 7:30. Local artists such as Frankie & the Moonlighters, the carnival royalty and the high school carnival court take part, and the night ends with the Rotary Dancers' version of New York, New York. Tickets were $20 at the Chamber of Commerce, Ampersound and NBT Bank, or $25 online, and the proceeds go to local charities through the Rotary's community grants program.

Fireworks nights

The carnival puts on three fireworks displays. The first follows the lighting of the Ice Palace on the opening Saturday; in 2026 that was 7 p.m. on February 7. The second comes with torchlight skiing at Mt. Pisgah, the village-owned ski hill at 92 Mt. Pisgah Lane, where skiers come down by torchlight before the fireworks; the 2026 edition, on Thursday, February 12, at 6 p.m., was the 72nd. The last display, Storming the Ice Palace, closes the carnival over the palace. It fell on the parade Saturday in 2025 and on the final Sunday in 2026, both times at 7:30 p.m., with roads around the palace closing from 6:15, so be parked and on foot well before then.

February evenings come early. In 2027 the first Saturday is February 6, and that evening the sun sets in Saranac Lake at 5:13 p.m. and the moon is new, so if the fireworks keep their 2026 time of 7 p.m., they go up in a dark, moonless sky. On February 13 the sun sets at 5:23 p.m. Mt. Pisgah has 15 skiable acres served by a T-bar, 329 feet of vertical and lights for night skiing, and its lodge sells food and hot drinks, which makes the torchlight night an easy evening out with children.

Races, games and music

Most of the program is outdoor sport, and much of it is free to watch. A typical carnival includes ski and snowshoe races, the Ice Palace Fun Run, a curling exhibition, Arctic Golf, woodsmen's demonstrations, Ultimate Frisbee games, Fireman's Broomball, an Arctic BBQ and the Ladies Fry Pan Toss, in which women throw a skillet underhand and the longest throw wins.

A few events have their own settings. The snowshoe races run under the lights at the Dewey Mountain Recreation Center, 238 George H. LaPan Memorial Highway, with age groups from 4 to 104; they have started at 6 p.m., with the youngest racers going first. Paul Smith's College students give a woodsmen's exhibition at Riverside Park. Mt. Pisgah hosts innertube races, and a Can-Am snow rugby game costs nothing to watch. Some events take entries through the carnival's activity sign-up page, so if someone in your group wants to race or throw a pan, look there before you go.

The evenings bring concerts and dances, many of them ticketed. The Waterhole, a music bar at 48 Main Street, booked 15 bands over eight nights for the 2026 carnival, and its shows were for ages 21 and up.

Getting there from the cabins

The palace is about 43 road miles from the cabins. Local roads and County Route 25 reach NY 30 in about seven miles. NY 30 runs south for 24 miles past Meacham Lake to Paul Smiths, where NY 86 takes you the last 12 miles into the village, arriving on Broadway. Allow about an hour in good weather and more after snow, and use the host's directions for the first miles. The winter driving guide covers tires, road reports and what to keep in the car for the drive home in the dark.

Paul Smiths is about 31 road miles along the way, and Paul Smith's College runs a 25-mile network of ski and snowshoe trails there from December 1 to April 1, open dawn to dusk every day, with the lodge and its rentals open Thursday to Monday; a day pass for adults has been $20. A morning ski there and an afternoon at the carnival make a full day; the cross-country guide has the trails, and the Saranac Lake and Paul Smiths guide has the rest of the village.

Parking and crowds

During the carnival the lot at the state boat launch beside the palace is closed to the general public for safety and traffic. On weekends, extra parking opens at North Country Community College, 23 Santanoni Avenue, about a 13-minute walk from the palace, and at Saranac Lake Middle School, 79 Canaras Avenue, about half an hour on foot. Harrietstown Town Hall and the Main Street restaurants are about ten minutes' walk from the palace.

The big events usually fall on the two Saturdays, and in 2027 the first weekend is shared with Lake Placid, nine miles away. The Empire State Winter Games run from February 4 to 7, 2027, with events in Lake Placid, at Whiteface, in Tupper Lake and in Saranac Lake itself, where the youth hockey tournaments and some cross-country races are held. Men's and women's World Cup ski jumping and Nordic combined come to Lake Placid from February 5 to 7, with the jumping competitions on February 6 and 7. The second weekend is Presidents' Day weekend. On either Saturday, arrive by late morning, park once and walk.

Where to eat in Saranac Lake

Main Street and Broadway, about ten minutes' walk from the palace, have most of the choices. Origin Coffee at 77 Main Street makes single-origin coffee and espresso drinks and serves toasts, paninis, soups and baked goods. Campfire, the restaurant in Hotel Saranac at 100 Main Street, works from a seasonal menu, and the hotel's Great Hall Bar is in the same building. The Scullery at Grizle T's is at 53 Main Street and Bitters & Bones at 65 Broadway. A little farther out, the Belvedere is at 102 Bloomingdale Avenue and Blue Line Brewery at 555 Lake Flower Avenue.

On the big Saturdays, eat early or late and call ahead for dinner, since hours in a small village change with the season. The carnival runs its own Arctic BBQ, and a thermos of something hot from the cabin helps on fireworks night.

A carnival day from the cabins

Here is one way to spend the opening Saturday, February 6, 2027. The times are built on the 2026 schedule, so move them once the 2027 schedule is posted.

The museum charges $7 for adults and $5 for students with an ID, and children 12 and under get in free. For the second Saturday, February 13, shift the day earlier: be on Broadway by noon for the parade, which stepped off at 1 p.m. in 2026, see the palace in the afternoon light, and stay for the closing fireworks if they fall that night. A weekday evening works too, since the palace is lit every night of the carnival.

Children at the carnival

The carnival is planned with families in mind. The 2026 palace had a maze and a children's ice slide, and on weekends the line for the slide ran 50 or 60 people long, so go early in the day. Children like hunting for the frozen fish. The kiddie parade, the snowshoe races with age groups starting at 4, the innertube races and the torchlight skiing at Mt. Pisgah all suit younger visitors, and in 2026 the carnival held a family night at the palace, with the carnival royalty and characters and refreshments.

Two places in the village work in any weather. The Adirondack Carousel at 2 Depot Street has carved animals from the Adirondacks, from bears and moose to loons and trout. It keeps short hours, Thursday to Sunday in the fall of 2026, so check its hours before you go; during the 2026 carnival it held its own carnival afternoon, with free coffee and hot chocolate. Mt. Pisgah runs a tubing hill, with two-hour sessions at $25 in the 2025-26 season.

What to wear

February in the northern Adirondacks is cold, and the carnival asks you to stand still in it. Malone's normal February high is 27°F and its low 6°F, and Saranac Lake's averages are about the same, a high of 28°F and a low of 7°F. The opening fireworks start after dark, and you may wait outside for an hour.

• Insulated boots with good tread, or traction cleats over them, for the palace floor and the snowbanks along Broadway.
• Layers that are not cotton, with a warm hat, mittens and a neck gaiter.
• Hand and toe warmers for the parade and the fireworks.
• A small pack with a thermos, snacks and a dry pair of gloves for the children.
• Snowshoes or traction spikes if you plan a climb, and a headlamp.
• Swimsuits left out at the cabin, so the soak starts the moment you get back.

The 6er bell and Lake Placid

The Saranac Lake 6er, the village's hiking challenge, ends at a bell on Berkeley Green at Broadway and Main, about a 12-minute walk from the palace, and hikers who finish all six mountains ring it. Baker Mountain, the first on the list, rises just outside the village: 1.6 miles round trip from Forest Hill Avenue near Moody Pond, climbing 884 feet to a 2,452-foot summit with views of the village, the McKenzie Mountain Wilderness and the High Peaks. To count it toward the 6er you must start and end at the bell on foot, which adds 1.3 miles each way. In winter, snowshoes are required and microspikes are recommended. Parking at the trailhead is very limited, so on a carnival weekend leave the car downtown and walk. The 6er guide covers all six peaks.

Lake Placid is 8.8 road miles from the palace, most of it on NY 86. From February 5 to 7, 2027, it hosts World Cup ski jumping and Nordic combined, with the jumping on the large HS128 hill at the Olympic Jumping Complex, and the Empire State Winter Games use the Olympic venues that weekend. The Olympic venues guide and the Lake Placid and Whiteface guide have the details.

Closer to the cabins, Titus Mountain is about three and a half road miles away, so a carnival weekend can include a ski day there too; see skiing Titus Mountain and the winter weekend plan. For the stay itself, every cabin has its own hot tub, and The Modern Pine and The Aviator share one property, so a group of eight can take both; compare them on the cabin comparison and book on the booking page. The rest of the year's events are in the events calendar.

Questions

Sources

Facts on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. Hours, fees and schedules change; confirm before you go.

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