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When setting off for hiking in winter weather, it is recommended to stop to think about what you can rely on, if weather does get worse, or if your own fitness is not enough to get you quite to the closest hut. For building a shelter of snow you will not even necessarily need deep snow. In trekking usage the different snow types have their own characteristics, it differs how you can use them as building material of shelters. Powder snow can be used to build a quinzee, hard packed snow is applicable in durable cubes even to build an igloo, whereas more damp thaw snow can be used to build snow wall around your tent. Snow works as an excellent insulation, since its porous structure traps much air. Chances for a warmer sleeping shelter are just given by these features. As an emergency shelter, a ditch dug in the snow will do, which roof can be for example your skies or something else that is suitable and is with you. Snow ditch is not indeed too nice, but as an emergency shelter quite considerable. Snow Cave As to build your snow cave, you need either three to four metre deep snow, or a slope on which snow piled up. During digging you will have to spare about a metre for roof thickness. It is really very important to make sure there is ventilation in you snow cave, especially if you stay for a longer while in the cave. Burning a candle in the cave not only brings light inside, but also informs you about the amount of oxygen in the cave. The self-extinction of the candle is a sign of lack of oxygen and it informs you about the instant need for increased ventilation. For safety's sake, it is good to keep a candle watch in the night, who follows up the oxygen situation. In the cave, the sleeping place will have to be much higher than the floor level and the door gap. This for the sake of carbon-dioxide, which is heavier than air and flows to the bottom of the cave and from there out through the gap under the door. Ventilation holes through the roof of the cave are also important and you will keep them open during snowfall, for example with your ski-sticks. A longer stay in a cave is only recommended if there is enough expertise for the arrangement of rightful conventional ventilation. Quinzee or snow mound hut A quinzee (sometimes even written quinze) can well be built of powder snow, and the very normal frost snow is completely suitable for creating your practical accommodating shelter. For the quinzee, you shovel snow into a huge pile, the diameter of which is about three to four metres. If there are two persons who will spend the night in it, then in a low quinzee an interior high enough to allow you to sit up will do, so an interior height of 150 cm is sufficient. It is good to take off some of your clothes for the time of digging, since sweating and soaked clothes could later expose you to hypothermia. Dry clothes keep you warm through the night. When enough snow is piled, then we pack it by beating lightly by shovel, and then we let the snow get hard for few hours. While it is getting harder, you collect twigs that are about 30 cm-long, and you can drink something hot, or prepare your food. You stick the collected twigs into different parts of the snow pile. When the pile has got hard, a cave is dug into it, while the 30 cm twigs make it easier to keep the necessary wall thickness. When a stick is reached while digging, then wall thickness is appropriate. It is good to prepare your ventilation holes through the roof already in this digging phase, so that you would not run out of oxygen. For the time of sleeping in your snow mound hut, you can cover the door gap by a backpack or a snow boulder. As for the candle burning and oxygen level follow-up the same things apply as in the case of the snow cave. It is also worthwhile to carry the work tool used for digging inside, so that you can dig yourself out, if a lot of snow falls in the night. Moreover, it is good to destroy your quinzee when you leave, since the durability of this snow mound hut suffers, and that can cause dangerous situations for those who struggle behind and would decide to use a ready snow hut. Translated from Finnish to English by Volford Péter.
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