It is widely believed that the carbonate–silicate cycle is the main agent, through volcanism, to trigger deglaciations by CO 2 greenhouse warming on Earth and on Earth-like planets when they get in a frozen state. Here we use a 3D Global Climate Model to simulate the ability of planets initially completely frozen to escape from glaciation episodes by accumulating enough gaseous CO 2 . The model includes CO 2 condensation and sublimation processes and the water cycle. We find that planets with Earth-like characteristics (size, mass, obliquity, rotation rate, etc.) orbiting a Sun-like star may never be able to escape from a glaciation era, if their orbital distance is greater than ∼1.27 Astronomical Units ( Flux < 847 W m − 2 or 62% of the Solar constant), because CO 2 would condense at the poles – here the cold traps – forming permanent CO 2 ice caps. This limits the amount of CO 2 in the atmosphere and thus its greenhouse effect. Furthermore, our results indicate that for (1) high rotation rates ( P rot < 24 h ), (2) low obliquity (obliquity <23.5°), (3) low background gas partial pressures (<1 bar), and (4) high water ice albedo (H 2 O albedo > 0.6), this critical limit could occur at a significantly lower equivalent distance (or higher insolation). For each possible configuration, we show that the amount of CO 2 that can be trapped in the polar caps depends on the efficiency of CO 2 ice to flow laterally as well as its gravitational stability relative to subsurface water ice. We find that a frozen Earth-like planet located at 1.30 AU of a Sun-like star could store as much as 1.5, 4.5 and 15 bars of dry ice at the poles, for internal heat fluxes of 100, 30 and 10 mW m−2, respectively. But these amounts are in fact lower limits. For planets with a significant water ice cover, we show that CO 2 ice deposits should be gravitationally unstable. They get buried beneath the water ice cover in geologically short timescales of ∼104 yrs, mainly controlled by the viscosity of water ice. CO 2 would be permanently sequestered underneath the water ice cover, in the form of CO 2 liquids, CO 2 clathrate hydrates and/or dissolved in subglacial water reservoirs (if any). This would considerably increase the amount of CO 2 trapped and further reduce the probability of deglaciation.