Quinzhee

I've always wanted to become a bit more competent as a winter outdoorsman.  I've tried winter camping a few times, and I pretty much always freeze my ass off.  After watching Nanook of the North again (one my favorite movies ever, watch it if you haven't seen it) I thought about the possibility of trying to build an igloo to try out.  After reading up on it a bit, and getting some tips from a coworker who grew up in northern Minnesota, I came to the conclusion an igloo was out of the question.  You have to have really hard, wind-packed snow to be able to cut blocks out of.  The rule of thumb is it has to be hard enough that you can walk on it and not sink in.  That never happens around here, even out on the reservoir.  However, it turns out there's a similar shelter that doesn't require such hard snow.  It's called a "quinzhee" (pronounced sorta like Quincy).  Armed with a basic understanding of how to build one and a good location in mind, I set off with an oversize snow shovel on my skis, out to my usual XC ski spot, the Waterbury Reservoir.

The north end of the Waterbury Reservoir.  Don't worry, the ice is about a foot thick (and the snow about 3 feet), and they lower the level about 10 feet in winter, so the ice I'm skiing on is actually resting on the bottom anyway.  I don't ski on the places where the ice is floating over deep water, even though it's probably safe.  I'm always out there alone, so I don't want to take any chances.  Lots of snow lately means I have to keep re-breaking in the "trail".  There only seems to be one other person who goes out there, but I've never seen him/her.

The shovel was a bit unwieldy in the woods before I got out to the reservoir, but once out there, it was no problem.  It'd be really nice to have one of those backcountry avalanche sort of shovels, but this one worked well enough.

Overkill snow shovel on my back...

Anywho, the spot I had in mind was around the backside of one of the points on the reservoir.  It's only visible once you round a certain corner, and that's a ways out there.  I don't think the other person who skis out here will mess with it.
So yes, a quinzhee... very simple to make, but quite time consuming for one person to do.  First, you pack down an area of snow about twice the size of the footprint of your shelter.  The snow was several feet deep, so I had to whack it with the shovel over and over until it was firm enough to not be a pain in the ass to stamp it down with my skis.  Once you're satisfied with that, you start building a really big pile of snow, and pack it down as you go.  By the end of this part, it should look something like this:

Quinzhee construction, Part 1 - build a big ass pile of compacted snow.  185cm ski for scale.

After you've gotten that far, it needs to sit for an hour or so, so the snow will compact itself a little more.  Putting good old gravity to work!  Also, it got a bit above freezing while I was doing this, which helped a lot.  Previously, the snow we've gotten was quite powdery, which doesn't stick together at all.  While I was waiting, I skied further on to the point where Chrissy and I often camp in the summer time.  There's one hairy section where the only way to get around a point is to traverse a 45 degree slab of snow covered ice.  That's where I usually turn around and call it good.  However, the mystery skier had gone beyond here (looks like he/she had taken their skis off to do so), so I continued on.  Here's a photo from our usual summer spot:

Looking south from our favorite campsite (near where Cotton Brook enters the reservoir) in February.

And just for fun, here's pretty much the same photo from this fall:

Same spot as above photo, taken in the fall (obviously).

After killing about an hour to get to that spot and back, I returned to the site to begin Part 3, hollowing it out.

That's one fine looking pile of snow.

I'd heard some good tips for evenly carving out the inside.  One, stick a ski pole down vertically from the apex, so you know from the inside where you are.  Two, insert a bunch of 6" sticks into the walls.  As you hollow it out from inside, you know you don't want to get any thinner if you get to one of those sticks.  Other than that, it's just a matter of digging out the inside of the pile.  This is where a smaller shovel would have been really helpful.  It was hard to maneuver that big thing while inside (that's what she said!).  Hollowing out took a lot less time than piling it up, and it was much more fun.  I basically moved that whole pile of snow twice!

Nearly done now.

I made the entrance south-facing, since the wind usually comes from the north out on the reservoir.  Also, that direction had the best view!  The snow that was removed from the inside was used to beef up the outside some more and build some walls along the entry, to keep out the wind.  After jamming in my ski pole in a few places to make ventilation holes, it was time to go inside and try it out.

Plenty of space for two people inside.  A bit dark, but that's to be expected.  I kept the walls a lot thicker than they needed to be, since I want this to last a week or so.  These are usually only used once then abandoned.  More of an emergency shelter than a long term habitation.

The finished product.  Can't wait to try sleeping in it.  Definitely will be warmer than a tent!

Thumbs up for my first quinzhee.  We'll see how it works out.

That's quite a long-winded post for piling up a bunch of snow and hollowing out the interior, but I thought some of you might be interested.  I'll follow up if I end up camping in it.  Thanks for reading.