On New Year's Day, Rachelle and I snowshoed into the woods to our campsite at about 2:30 in the afternoon. The sun was shining and it was a comfortable temperature, but with 30 cm of snow in the forecast, I decided to build a quinzee to help us through the night.
While I was working on the mound of snow, we were visited by four snowshoers and their three dogs who were in the area on a hike of their own. They chatted with us for a few minutes and seemed impressed with our set-up, including our Coleman stove, a pile of firewood, and our tents. Then, when they noticed our soon-to-be quinzee, they said, "Oh, you're really going to have fun!"
After about an hour of shoveling, I had a pretty good pile of snow. Then Sarah and Cole (my sister & her boyfriend) showed up, and we sat around chatting for a bit. Then Cole and I cut more wood for the fire we would have later, while Rachelle and Sarah dismantled the tents and tarps in anticipation of the coming storm. We didn't want to have to deal with packing them up after being dumped on all night.
After a few hours, it came time to hollow out the quinzee. I began and eventually had a big enough hole to allow myself inside, while Sarah carted off the snow in a sled. Then she took a turn while I discarded the snow. Another hour of this wet and sweaty work gave us what we thought would be an invincible snow shelter.
We set up our sleeping quarters, including a brand new double-size air mattress, which surprisingly allowed all four of us on it, with only our feet hanging off the end. Rachelle and I had our down-filled sleeping bags, while Cole and Sarah were bundled under a pile of blankets and summer-weight bags. Our new North Face tent booties were a great touch, and were very warm and comfortable.
Before heading to bed, we spent a few hours around the campfire (of hissing wet wood), which did eventually grow into a decent sized campfire. The key was the bag of birch bark we collected. We had spider dogs, s'mores, and hot chocolate. It was great to catch up with my sister as she spends much of her time away from home, going to school in Newfoundland.
When it came time to go to bed (i.e. we ran out of firewood), we all answered the call of nature and piled into the quinzee, sealing off the entrance with an empty pack. A long-burning candle inside the structure provided the light, and several games of 20 Questions provided the entertainment. Eventually, everyone became silent and dozed into subconsciousness. That was short-lived for me, however, due to Cole's snoring.
It snowed like crazy during the night. As snow gathered on the fur boughs above the quinzee and reached critical mass, they would give way and come crashing down on the quinzee, giving some of us quite a start. There were fears that it would cave in. I was pretty confident that it would be ok, and people went back to sleep for a couple hours. Then, at 3:30 in the morning, Rachelle told me that the roof was melting, and actually had soaked through her sleeping bag at the zipper. It actually looked like the whole roof was sagging due to the melting (see above photo). It was maybe 6 inches from the roof to our sleeping bags! Rather than suffer through more hours of this, we decided to strap into our snowshoes and make the 20 minute hike out, to sleep at my uncle and aunt's house nearby. We would return in the morning to get all our gear.
Only we got lost on the way out, which was infuriating due to the raging snowstorm and pitch blackness. Even with our headlamps, it was very difficult to see where we had previously walked. After an hour and a half, we made it out! It was hellish at the time, but we had a good laugh about it afterwards.
Despite the name of my blog, I am quite content to live inside, at least for tonight.
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