So, I am in the Deepest Wastes of Cania and there is a cave labeled Beneath the Ice, but I cannot get to it. I have tried transforming into a pixie and using the demon hand, but there seems to be no way across the lava pool. I am missing something obvious, but what is it?

Thank you!

Never mind, I posted too soon.

bet you are having fun if this is your first time through Cania!

I am having a great time. HoTU has been one of the best games I have played.

Sorry to dig this thread back up from the grave, but I'm having the same issue. I can't seem to find any way to cross the lava pool, and unfortunately the OP did not post the solution for how he got around it. Google searches have turned up nothing, and walkthroughs either omit this section or don't even mention how to get across the pool, so it must be something REALLY obvious I'm missing, or it's a bug. Can anybody shed some light on this?

No worries. Think of it as an oldie but goodie.
Okay, let me think here. I'm not 100 percent clear off the top of my head where you are exactly. You've gotten past the Mimic's chest since you have the hand. So the only way to get across lava is to use the hand over by some ice trolls shortly after the mimics chest area, the puzzler's chamber requires that you pull levers while arrows are pointing in the desired direction, there's a spot where there are some fire elementals across some lava, but I don't know if I've ever bothered with them unless I have some ranged weaponry, and finally in the battlefield after you've fought a slew of summoned devil fodder, you use the hand to get across some lava. If this doesn't answer your question, if you can clue me in with a couple more details about where you are, it will jog my memory and I should be able to help you. Good luck!

Thanks for the reply! I actually discovered the solution after watching several Let's Plays on Youtube to see if any of them found the solution (fun fact: 4/5 of the Let's Plays I watched all couldn't figure it out and just skipped the side-quest/area!)

So what was going wrong? It turns out that you do need to use the Grappling Hand to cross the lava gorge, BUT... the torch for the hand to grab onto does not show up unless you are wearing the Sleeping Man's ring.

The pixie form can pass through that hot coal corridor that does like 100 fire damage/second.
The grappling hand can reach (or at least grab things) elsewhere in that cave. I want to say that people should have figured out by this point in the act that you should put on the sleeping man's ring to see ethereal objects. But... ehh... the trick with the pixie form definitely took me a couple of play-throughs :)