Condensate Drain Winter

Hello,

regarding the current situation: air source heat pump with an outdoor unit which is mounted on a standard base and frame and stands in the gravel eaves strip at the house.
Now in winter I already have a considerable "ice rink" due to the freezing condensate.

What are your experiences or ideas to avoid or reduce this? Drainage, connection to the drainage system...? I would not favor heating...

The condensate drain is connected to the drainage on my end

:
Condensate drain with hose vertically into the ground and then connected to the drainage there? How deep is your drainage at this point? Problems with ice directly in the condensate drain (above ground or just below the surface)?

The hose goes straight down vertically into the drain pipe. I can't really tell you how deep that is. The slab builder did everything all at once back then.
Our heating engineer initially forgot to push the condensate hose into the drain pipe.
There have been no problems so far. At least after the cold nights (we had a max of -12° here) the outdoor unit was always ice-free and there was no ice rink around the unit...

Here it freezes directly below the outdoor unit, i.e., we have a sizable icicle. So far, everything has permeated into the gravel beneath the device; nothing spreads out here (so that an ice surface could form).

Can you post a picture? How wide is the gravel area? Is there a slope? How coarse is the gravel? Could you possibly just put a small gravel edge so that the water no longer spreads out?

For me, the condensate drain is connected to the drainage

What kind of device do you have? How is the condensate collected? Do you happen to have a picture?