Snow shelter

What you need

• A shovel, a snowshoe or a pot lid to dig with
• A dozen sticks about a foot long
• A pad or spruce boughs for the floor
• Something bright to mark the door

How

1. Pick a drift on the lee side of a bank or a ridge, deep enough to dig into, with nothing above that can slide down on you.
2. Pile snow into a mound taller than you are sitting, then walk away and let it settle and set for an hour.
3. Push the sticks into the mound all over. When you dig from the inside and hit a stick tip, you know the wall is a foot thick and you stop.
4. Dig the door low and small on the downwind side, then hollow upward so the sleeping shelf sits higher than the door and the cold runs out under you.
5. Poke a fist sized vent through the roof and keep it open all night.
6. Floor it with boughs or a pad. Bare snow will take the heat out of you no matter what your bag is rated at.

Watch for

Notes

A tree well under a big spruce, floored with boughs and roofed by the branches already there, is half a shelter for a tenth of the work. In our woods that is usually the better trade.