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My Snow Shelter

When I heard a blizzard was barreling along the country towards New England and the announcement was made that there would be no school on Thursday, it is safe to say that fort building was not in my future plans. After several trips outside on Thursday and Friday to shovel snow off the driveway, all of the stairs, all of the paths, and the back deck, I was not looking forward to spending more time outside in the biting cold to create an elaborate snow structure. Off and on over the weekend, I searched for a possible solution to my dilemma until I came across an image of a structure typically taught in the Boy Scouts, the mighty tree pit, which takes advantage of the lesser amount of snow below a evergreen tree due to the needles stopping the vast majority of the snow coming down.These same tree wells that are used to create a snow shelter that can save a life are also a major danger to skiers and snowboarders on glades as they can slide into these wells which can be quite deep and dislodge the snow from the tree above them trapping them upside down in the well. 


This type of structure also met my requirements of being quick to build with little effort while also fulfilling the requirements of the project. Upon this discovery, I set out with my shovel across the backyard into the woods. After a long and extensive search (which took ten minutes), I had found my tree, I did not have worry about low hanging branches, because as a kid I had snapped all the branches off the very bottom part of the tree. This saved me a lot of effort of having to clear these branches, although I did take some of the smaller boughs from another tree to provide myself a suitable floor for my structure once it was finished. The foliage of this tree was not thick enough to allow me to skip the step of adding extra evergreen boughs to form a wind break. Using a shovel under the tree was quite difficult but I eventually figured out how to make a level floor to put the boughs on allowing me to complete the structure in about 25 minutes of actual work consisting of shoveling out a small hole around the trunk of the tree, throwing a lot of the collected material on the lower branches to form a windbreak, and using the rest of the collected material for the floor. However, before this I had spent about a half hour collecting the boughs for the floor and for the windbreak. The structure was quite warm and even in the stiff wind outside I felt little breeze inside my structure. I would call this shelter a major success and I am glad I taught myself how to build this great survival structure.





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