A snowhole lot of fun

Building a snowhole was one of the most exciting, satisfying and rewarding experiences I've had for a long time. Perhaps it’s the contrast of carving something so potentially civilised from a bank of snow halfway up a mountain. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that you are building your home for the night, and if it’s not finished or done well you’re in for a rough night. Or maybe it’s just the enjoyment of working hard with a team of friends to achieve something awesome.

This snowholing experience gave us the opportunity to work together in our team and practice management systems for kit, work and each other.

We set off in at around 11am after a good hour and a half of anticipated equipment faff. We were off to a particularly good start when it transpired that a certain team member *cough* Iwan *cough, cough*, had left his boots at home… However, we were soon packed and raring to go.

Despite Jose’s threats of a three hour walk in somewhere in the Cairngorms, we ended up taking the gondola at Nevis Range up to 600m on the North Face of Aonach Mor. We walked for about and hour and a half, around and down to the western side of the mountain. We eventually found two large curved banks of snow which, after being thoroughly probed, were chosen as our snowholing sites.

We had been briefed twice already on the practicalities of digging a snowhole in the classroom, but that’s not quite the same as trying to visualised where and how to dig one in real life. The video below contains a high quality architect’s drawing of what a snowhole should look like - with commentary I might add!

So anyway, after a brief outline from Ali and Scott as to the position of our doors we began to dig. Which went something like this:

Swing - *thunk* - Lever - *scrape* - chuck - *thump - repeat till done

Our first challenge was the fact that due to the angle of the ground and our inability to notice before we’d already dug a fair amount, was that one of our doorways started higher than the the other. This meant it was even harder to work out when to join the two doors and actually how high we should start digging to make the join. We pressed on however and soon had the literal breakthrough moment! Much joyous shouting and singing ensued and we were able to start the next phase of the dig.

It soon became apparent that our snowhole was not going to be following the normals rules of size and shape when we hit rock sooner than expected. This meant we needed to expand in different directions in order to fit all five of us. We also had the difficulty of being sandwiched between two other snowholes which meant digging with care and cunning. The below video outlines the final form of our snow hole.

Once we had achieved the rough shape and size of our ‘unconventional’ icy home, we needed to smooth the roof as much as possible to prevent drips forming on grooves and ragged sections. By smoothing the roof with a shovel and then a gloved hand we were able to produce a shape which would allow any drips to flow down and around the roof and sort of disappear into the ice.

Our snowy house finally finished after four and a half hours of digging we set up outside to cook some well earned dinner. A dirty burner and cold gas combined to produce a great deal of firey fire which looked much worse than it actually was but gave us all a fright and meant cooking dinner took a little longer than usual as we tried to keep the gas above freezing.

Dinner over we headed over to suss out the competition. The other two groups snowholes were guided by Jose and Dennis, seasoned snowholers who designed with comfort in mind. Let’s just put it this way, comparing our quirky snow warren with their deluxe twin room was like comparing a 4 star B&B to wild camping with 4 people in a 3 man tent!

However, our snowhole was soon decorate with glowsticks and tea lights and once we were all snuggled in our sleeping bags we couldn’t help feeling extremely proud of our achievement.

The next morning woke to discover that not only had we not died of carbon monoxide poisoning (Jose and his scaremoungering…) our snowhole hadn’t sagged at all due to a cold night and in my opinion, expert construction. We were up, breakfasted, packed and ready to head of by 9am. We waved goodbye to our cold little hobbit holes and started back the way we’d come. The morning was warm and clear and walk back flew past.

Conversations in the gondola revealed the difference in desires to experience snowholing again. Some couldn’t wait to get back out there and build another, bigger, better, fancier ice palace at the next available opportunity. While others professed that never again would they feel the need to snowhole. Maybe if it was a bit warmer? Yeah… not sure that’s how snowholes work, Megan…