1:00pm: Pat work hardens a circular area to build our shelter:
We mark the sidewalls of the Quinzhee and shovel, shovel, shovel!
We Continue piling snow on...
3:20pm: Once our pile became dome-shaped, we stomp on the snow and pat it down with our shovels.
We then let the snow settle for about an hour before beginning to excavate our Quinzhee at 4:40pm.
6:00 pm: After 1.5 hours of excavation, we're finally complete! Time to cook dinner & hop in the sleeping bags. We were treated with a clear sky & a great 3/4 full moon shining brightly.
We were toasty warm all night long inside the quiznhee (the low was forecast to 15 F). The snow acts as a great insulator & we built our hut such that it traps heat... I was very warm all night just wearing my wet/soggy long underwear (from all the work shoveling).Quinzhee stats:
- Radius: 160 cm (it could've been MUCH smaller for the three of us!)
- 2 hours, 30 minutes of continuous work piling snow on
- 1 hour, 10 minutes waiting for the pile of snow to harden
- 1 hour, 30 minutes tunneling out the quinzhee
- Total time: about 5 hours. Next time we could probably shave off an hour or so by:
- Build it smaller: We probably could've slept 5 people
- It seems like it's more important to find a wide open field of snow to build near rather than the deepest drift possible to build on... We had a bunch of trees/rocks in the way, which made lugging snow to the initial mound take a long time.
Ready to build your own snow shelter? Check out these great books (wow, that really sounded like a tag-line from Reading Rainbow!)
All & all, building the quinzhee was fun & educational... Next time I want to try building an Igloo. Given the right snow conditions, I think it should require less physical work to build a large igloo...
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