Jacob had mentioned it before, but it wasn't until Trent and Todd started making plans to go snowshoeing and build a snow cave that I really decided that sleeping in a frozen hole sounded like fun. In the end Todd chickened out, and Jacob, Trent, and I set out for Dog Lake in Big Cottonwood Canyon with shovels and snowshoes on a beautiful Saturday morning. I'd never used snowshoes before, but even with a full pack it was pretty easy. The spikes on the bottom make it easy to get traction going uphill on the snow, and the only problem I had was in trying not to step on the other shoe as we traversed some narrow trails along the side of a hill. We were late getting out the door, but the trail was only around 2.5 miles and the slope was a pretty gentle rise. We made it to Dog Lake around 3:00, and hiked over a small rise to a more secluded spot overlooking what Jacob told us was a meadow in summer.

Jacob brought his new four-season tent with him as a backup, and he set it up at the bottom of the hill while Trent and I started to build the snowcave about halfway up the hill. None of us had ever tried building one of these before, so we were a little unsure of what to expect — especially since we had failed at building a snowman a few days before because the snow was too powdery to pack into balls. With that experience fresh in our memories, we were probably a bit over-cautious. We dug a large trench around the future site of the snowcave, piling the snow up to make a larger mound and simultaneously finding out how deep the snow was. It was nearly shoulder-deep, but the top layers seemed pretty powdery. After digging out the trench, Trent got on top of the mound and packed it down with his snowshoes, and we set to digging out the cave. The instructions we'd read for building snowcaves said to wait for a while to let the newly-mounded snow to settle and solidify, but we'd made it there late and didn't have a lot of time before it was dark, so we decided to start digging immediately and just leave the roof extra thick. Trent started the excavation, and made good progress digging the main tunnel. We dug uphill so that our cave would trap the rising warm air once we were inside, which was about all we could do since we were on the side of a hill. After a while I took a turn inside, and at first it was slightly unnerving — we were several feet into the snowbank at that point, and the tunnel was only about shoulder-width wide, so as I chopped out snow and sent it back behind me I often blocked the entrance and had to crawl back down and kick the snow far enough towards the opening for one of the guys to shovel it out. We had decided earlier that one shovel should stay outside the cave in case of a collapse — I wanted someone to be able to dig me out if I brought the roof down on my head.

One of the most surprising things about the snowcave was how effective the snow was at deadening sound. Once I was only a couple of feet inside the tunnel it was impossible to communicate with anyone outside. The snow absorbed all sound, and we often could still see the feet of the person digging but couldn't catch their attention no matter how loud we yelled. Vibrations traveled through the snow pretty well, though, and I could hear Trent walking on top of the snow pile with disturbing clarity at one point while I was digging inside. He was testing the thickness of the ceiling with a hiking pole, and managed to place it with remarkable precision, hitting me right in the chest while I dug inside on his first try. We tried to gauge the thickness, and decided that the snow wasn't going to be thick enough to have sitting space inside. The tunnel was following the slope of the hill, and we really wanted to sleep on a level surface, so from the main uphill shaft we dug three perpendicular person-length side shafts to serve as sleeping quarters.

We dug out an area at the entrance and piled the snow in a semicircular wall as a windbreak. By this time it was getting pretty dark, and we were hungry and cold so we started cooking dinner. We sat on our sleeping pads around my campstove in our makeshift vestibule, but the temperature was dropping and it was an uncomfortably cold dinner. We each made some hot soup — mine was dehydrated and didn't cook all the way, so it was pretty crunchy and disgusting, but it was hot and nourishing so I was happy to have it. Afterwards I was still cold so I made another pot of hot water and we each drank some, too tired and cold to bother making tea or hot chocolate. Trent's clothes were pretty wet, and he was really getting too cold. I had some extra long underwear that I lent him, but the idea of climbing in the cave had lost all appeal to him and he decided to test out the comforts of Jacob's tent. While he hauled his things to the bottom of the hill, Jacob and I worked on setting up our beds inside the cave. Since there was nowhere inside where the roof was more than about two feet high, it was a pretty difficult undertaking. I had two ground pads (I really wanted to be insulated from the snow), a bivy sack (since we figured the roof would be dripping by the time we woke up), and a sleeping bag, and getting it all arranged was a nontrivial task in such confined quarters. Eventually I managed to unroll the two pads, stuff the sleeping bag inside the bivy, and get myself inside. Since Trent wasn't sleeping in the cave, Jacob took the 'top bunk' all the way at the end of the main tunnel, and I took the 'middle bunk', and we used the lowest tunnel to hold our extra gear. We made air holes in each of the sleeping tunnels, and left a hiking pole in each to be able to clear them if they became blocked with snow. We had talked about lighting a candle inside, as we had read it would increase the inside temperature by as much as 20 degrees, but in the end decided that we were warm enough in our bags and didn't need it. We blocked the entrance to the cave with the tarps we had packed with us, and just chilled out and talked.

Once again I was amazed at how much the snow deadened sounds. Jacob's head was only about a foot away from mine, but if we ducked back in our tunnels just far enough not to see each other, we could barely hear if the other person shouted. At about 10:30 we decided to try sleeping. With the lights out in the cave it was absolutely dark. I slept pretty well at first, but eventually woke up because even with two ground pads, the snow I was sleeping on was rock hard. I slept on and off the rest of the night, but was pretty uncomfortable and didn't get that much total sleep. Night in the cave was bizarre — cinched up inside a mummy-style sleeping bag inside a bivy sack inside a tiny little snow tunnel, in the pitch black and dead silence, it was as close to a sensory deprivation tank as anything I'd ever experienced. By the time Jacob's alarm went off at 7:00, my hips and knees were bruised from pressure against the ground and I was ready to get up and move around. It was hard to get myself out of my warm sleeping bag, though, and getting my shoes on and my sleeping gear packed away was a difficult and cold task. I realized again how difficult camping in the snow can be — even the simplest tasks are a chore when you have to do them with numb fingers. My gloves had been wet from the day before, and now they were frozen solid and not providing much warmth. I had to pack a few things and then stick my hands down my pants to warm some feeling back into them, then pack a few more things.

Jacob went down and helped Trent take down the tent. Trent's night had been a little chilly, but he said he had been able to sleep fairly well. He said that there had been a good bit of wind, though, which Jacob and I definitely never heard. Eventually I organized my pack, and Jacob and I demolished the snow cave. Apparently it's illegal to leave a standing snow cave — I'm not sure who that is meant to protect. During the demolition we found that we would have had plenty of room to clear out a space to sit up, the ceiling of the cave was nearly four feet thick. We certainly didn't have to worry about it caving in on us.

It had started snowing on us while we were packing, and we were worried that the canyon road would be closed, trapping us at the jeep for a few hours while they cleared the road. We could hear them doing some avalanche blasting, which made us worry about it a bit more — so once we got our packs together, we hiked out pretty fast. The snowshoes I had (borrowed from Todd) were tearing my feet up — on the downhill slopes, they had a tendency to tighten up and tangle up on my feet, and I had a pressure point on each little toe that was being rubbed raw. In the end, though, the hike back was pretty easy, the road was open, and we booked it into town to get a good greasy diner breakfast.

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