Building A Snow Cave
Last weekend, Paul, Luci & I went on an overnight snow camping trip in Tahoe with the Sierra club. It was awesome.
The highlight for all three of us was digging a snow cave that we slept in for the night. It was an ambitious goal for the couple of hours we had between reaching camp & the sun going down. But we were determined. As we were digging, our trip leaders loved seeing our enthusiasm & gave us many useful tips, but were fairly confident we would end up sleeping in the tent we set up for backup shelter. Extra motivated by the constraint of time, we succeeded at building ourselves a cozy home in the snow for the night 🙂
So, what does it mean to build a snow cave?
After finding a good looking site, we took our shovels and dug down. It’s important to get below the powdery snow to the underlaying compacted snow to ensure the ceiling has structural integrity (and not just collapse). Once we were content with the depth we start digging into the slope, and forming the cave. It’s important to keep the entrance to the cave small to keep the warmth trapped in during the night. From the outside, you would never guess how spacious this cave actually was. The three of us fit pretty comfortably. With a bit more time, we would have made the ceiling a bit higher so Luci & Paul could sit up properly. (I had plenty of room. Perks of being short & in the middle hehe).
Turns out, digging into snow is tough, but half of the challenge is excavating the mass amounts of icy snow you have dislodged. Water is heavy. The three of us came up with some clever tricks for efficiency. Since it is important to keep the entrance small, only one person could dig at a time at first. We rotated frequently so we would always be operating at maximum digging velocity. We put down a tarp to accumulate the unearthed snow & the other two would drag the tarp full of snow out of the way. We were amused by the efficiency of our tarp rotation technique. Once we were into the cave, two people could carve into the snow at the same time. We found that using a snow saw and following with a shovel was an effective way to tear down lots of snow. Sawing, carving & digging was a fun challenge that involved some highly specific shovel / saw techniques & contorting your body into creative positions. Excavating tarps full of frozen water required harnessing the strength of your entire body. After hours of focused work, we successfully created our home for the night out of what previously was an unremarkable section of snow and trees.
My bed for the night consisted of an extremely poofy sleeping bag resting on two sleeping mats inside the cave. When I first got in & turned off my headlamp, I felt slightly claustrophobic. My eyes were enveloped in the pitch black darkness of an abyss. My ears were confused by the total absence of sound; a silence only punctured by the occasional rustling of the down sleeping bags. I had no idea how close or far the ceiling was. Luckily, the moment of fear passed and was replaced by intense appreciation for the warmth this cave was providing us. A bathroom break revealed the harsh bite of the wind and snow in the outside world, and it was a wonderful feeling to crawl back into our comfortable slice of stillness.
