Info on building snow shelters

I'm an avid three-season hiker interested in tackling the winter. While in the process of doing research I've seen a few comments from people that build snow shelters rather than bring tents. Can anyone point me toward info on how to build such a shelter and what issues arise in doing so?

Any help is appreciated.
Chris

Copy/paste:
http://www.call-wild.com/quinzee.html

http://www.princeton.edu/~oa/winter/wintshel.shtml

Also see the recent discussions on this board about snow shovel. :-)

Thanks

You are about to discover the best season of the year for backcountry travel!

A couple books - Mountaineering Freedom of the Hills is the "bible". It is aimed mostly at climbers, but has information of use for you.

Snow Caves for Fun and Survival by Ernest Wilkinson.

If you don't have a store near you that carries these, order them from the Adventurous Traveller (www.adventuroustraveller.com).

Another source is your neighborhood Boy Scout Service Center. Look for the Okpik book (from the Northern Tier High Adventure Base in Minnesota) and the Venturing books on snow camping. You could also take the course I direct for Scout leaders on Winter and Snow Camping Activities, but you are probably in the wrong part of the country.

There are snow camping courses offered in all parts of the US with snow. Try guide services, outing clubs, local colleges and universities, and outdoor shops (EMS, REI, smaller specialty shops).

LesM, thanks for the quinzhee link. I had overlooked that one. The Princeton Outdoor Action one is the classic, of course.

Ed Heusers owns the company, makes the gizmo, and is an avid snow shelter builder. He's a hoot to talk with.

http://www.grandshelters.com/

http://www.grandshelters.com/images/four-season-tent-lt-s2.jpg

Is what it (the form - not the shelter) looks like on your back.

Chris - do your self a favor - bring a tent.
Jim

with snow shelters caving in or something? What 2-3 person tents would you recommend?

Thanks for your input,
Chris

Jim just panicks when in the confined space of a snow shelter. He was at a winter camping course I direct every year during one of our traditional blizzards, and decided in the middle of the night that he wasn't going to be able to get out of his shelter in the morning at the rate the snow was piling up. So he bailed and got into his tent. Now, ya gotta unnerstand - Jim had spent more time building a snow fortress around his tent than he did on his snow shelter (supposedly snow wind walls, but it would have worked for a major winter storm at the 17,000 foot camp on Denali). And he does have a Bibler Eldo, which is made to stand up to major Himalayan storms. So when Jim suggests a tent, he doesn't mean a Eureka summer tent. He is talking about a full-on expedition tent.

Ok, Jim has a point here. And yes, he does have experience (he and I have done a couple winter trips together). It is easier and faster to put up a good tent than for most people to dig a snow shelter. Count on an hour or two per person capacity to do a snow shelter your first half-dozen times. Even a complex expedition tent generally takes no more than 10 or 15 minutes, although in a full-on blizzard, it can take an hour (nice thing about Biblers - I have put one up and fully staked it in 10 minutes in a full-on blizzard with measured 45 knot winds - actually dead-manned rather than staked). But, with a bit of experience, you can do a bolt-hole in 10 or 15 minutes, then enlarge it at leisure.

Another problem with snow shelters is that some people (like Jim) get claustrophobic in a shelter of the same size as a tent they feel comfortable in. Over the years of directing the snow camping course, I have had 3 or 4 people bail to a tent because of feeling "trapped". I have seen the roofs of snow shelters sag significantly when the weather was too warm and the roof too thin, and more importantly, when the roof was insufficiently domed. The only collapses I have seen were during the digging phase. There are ways to avoid this, but too long to go into here.

Quote:

Jim just panicks when in the confined space of a snow shelter

(Jim) actually I kept getting snow in my sleeping bag and I felt the snow shelter was too damp. I think a good tent can provide a much more comfortable dry environment for all of that goose down. Most important - you will get wet from sweat digging a snow cave and it takes a lot of energy in the form of food to put out that much work. In some cases - such as an emergency stop for a cold or injured skier, the time and energy required to build a snow shelter could mean the difference between life and death.

Quote:

Now, ya gotta unnerstand - Jim does have a Bibler Eldo, which is made to stand up to major Himalayan storms. So when Jim suggests a tent, he doesn't mean a Eureka summer tent. He is talking about a full-on expedition tent.

(Jim) in Bills course everyone first sets up tents just in case. He also didn't mention that I slept in my tent every night while he and the scouts slept in the lodge the first night and had emergency beds available.

Quote:

Ok, Jim has a point here. And yes, he does have experience (he and I have done a couple winter trips together). It is easier and faster to put up a good tent than for most people to dig a snow shelter.

(Jim) Hey - snow shelters are fun to be in and they bring back some of the romance of camping, but I am a ski-camper and I travel light with everything I need in my pack. My 4pound 4 ounce Goretex tent requires far less energy to set up than digging in. I(n the long run - go ahead and try snowshelters, but do not depend on them for normal winter usage anymore than you would always go survival camping in warm weather.

P.S. You can just skake open a Bibler tent and crawl inside it and pitch the tent from the inside so frankly it doesn't matter how long it takes to set up as you are inside it in about ten seconds. (yes Bill - you can always reach out the door and shove in a pair of iceaxes - in the case of your tent, you could reach all four tie outs from the inside)
Jim S. (:->)

Quote:

I'm an avid three-season hiker interested in tackling the winter. While in the process of doing research I've seen a few comments from people that build snow shelters rather than bring tents. Can anyone point me toward info on how to build such a shelter and what issues arise in doing so?

A good snow shelter is so much warmer than a tent. The way I started, was to build a simple quinzie (sp?). Plan for an easy trip, whose goal is to gain experience with snow shelters, not to climb some great hill, or cover great distances. Pick a place to camp that is not all that far away, so that if things go wrong, you can easily head out.

Choose your spot, and simply pile snow there. Get a pile,
oh say 4-5 feet high, and 8 feet long. Just pack it with the back of the shovel a bit, don't pack it down real tight.

Once the pile is done, leave it for an hour or so. The snow hardens quite a bit. Know how when the plow comes and pushes snow in your driveway? If you get out there fast, it isn't too bad clearing it, but if you wait, the snow is hard like cement.

After an hour, hollow it out. Others have given URLs to more details. Once done, go in, and light your candle lantern. Scoop out a little shelf on the wall to hold it (can't do that in a tent). It is bright! Notice how quiet it is inside. Notice the lack of wind. Notice the warmth.

And what did it cost you? A weekend to try. Wosrt that can happen, is that started working on it, not much snow, then it starts raining.. well, you chose your site so that it is not too far from your car, so you walked out.

Oh one more thing. In the morning, before leaving, stand on it. Isn't it amazing how it supports your weight? That snow sure hardened up good.

Oh yeah.. depending on where you build it, it may still be there when you come back to the area.

Then, once you've convinced yourself how nice it is to sleep in snow, look at the igloo maker ar grandshelter.com (URL in another reply)

Just start simple.

In case readers hadn't figured it out, Jim and I kid each other a lot. And we disagree with each other, sometimes just to disagree and to get to the real "bottom line" on techniques, gear, etc.

Anyway, about the snow course -

The course is for adult Scout leaders interested in taking their youth out for a snow experience. The emphasis is on safety procedures. Since they will be dealing with adolescents in full hormonal flow (mostly males, but these days, older Scouts have coed activities, or in the case of Venturing units, are fully coed units), and since the youth often have no experience in snow camping, a major part of the course is on hazard avoidance and what to do when the inevitable happens. Remember that youth are immortal, invulnerable, and omniscient (omniscient = "know everything, just ask them, certainly know more than any adult").

The reason for the night preceding the course being in a lodge is that the students for the course come up right after work, meaning a 3 to 5 hour drive, often in a snow storm. Usually about half have no snow experience beyond a little skiing or sledding. And half the rest have never camped in the snow before. We do require "extensive" backpacking experience, though. So it isn't a good idea for them to have to set up camp at night in a storm for their very first snow campout. The staff, on the other hand, usually arrives the day before and does preliminary setup. Some of us stay in the lodge with the students (checkin, answer questions, etc.), but some of the staff stays in tents or snow shelters the full time (I usually do, mainly because we use a bunkhouse, and you get away from the snorers by staying outside).

Because the majority of the students are first-time snow campers, we keep emergency backups in the lodge, just in case someone turns out to be ill-prepared, doesn't follow the safety rules, or (remember that these are adults, parents of scouts who have been working at a desk for the past 15 years, and are out of shape, overweight, etc) in case of serious emergency. This also serves as part of the learning experience ("you will have inexperienced adolescents, whose gear is not the best, and who sometimes don't pay attention to the basic safety rules; therefore, plan ahead, be prepared, and expect occasional emergencies"). We do, by the way, encourage the students to bring clothing and gear that the youth are likely to bring, just to see how well/poorly it works.

On setting the tents up first - there are two purposes to this. Remember that the students will be taking youth into the snow, and that many of the students are first-timers themselves. If you have built less than a half-dozen snow shelters, it will probably take you a minimum of an hour or two per person capacity (more for a quinzhee, since the snow pile has to set up first). Even with the igloo-building device mentioned in one of the other posts, it takes a lot of time until you get experience. As Jim mentions, you are likely to get very wet as well, although with experience, this becomes less of a problem (that is, you will eventually learn to stay dry while building your shelter). The time factor means that there is a strong possibility that your shelter will not be complete by the time it gets dark, and in particular, your scouts will not have shelters in shape to sleep in. Therefore, the tents serve as a backup, and are there in case of an accident during the building of the shelter. The only snow shelter collapses in my personal experience (actually second-hand) involved inexperienced people, inadequate roof thicknesses, and inadequate doming of the roof. I should add, I suppose, the igloo that was being built on a very warm, very sunny day (45F) (the snowcaves and quinzhees being built at the same time were just fine). The igloo melted about as fast as the blocks were being set in place.

I agree with Jim (and even touched on it) that the Bibler I-tent and Eldorado (and similar Integral Designs tents) are pretty fast to set up. You can even use them as bivy sacks if you leave the poles behind. And yes, you can pull it out of the stuff sack, toss your pack and you inside, and now, somewhat out of the storm, finish setting up, even to reaching outside to put in a couple of ski poles/ice axes/skis for anchors (or even set deadmen). And yes, in my double-door Eldo, I can get all 4 in place (it's a bit harder to do the side guys and the vestibule set up through a little opening in the door, though). But most tents aren't anywhere that easy to set up.

I've added a "tents vs shelters" post above with many of the pluses and minuses of each.