More on Snowcraft I today. Today is Sunday and the meal schedule is different. We have brunch at 10 AM, so I will leave soon to have brunch and then hopefully complete part III of Snowcraft I (because it was so fun!) and get everything updated to the present. I leave for the Dry Valleys tomorrow morning.

We finished setting up the Scott tents and securing them really well by making "dead man" or buried stakes. First, you dig with a mountaineering pickaxe a very narrow trench perpendicular to the line between two opposing corners of the tent. Using the pick, you slightly undercut the trench on the tent side. Then, you dig out a line perpendicular to that one, making a "T" that points toward the tent (this new line is for the rope attached to the tent to come up out of the snow.) You place the rope attached to the edge of the pyramid of the tent (it is about 1/2 of the way up) into the trench and then place a tent stake over the rope in the first part of the trench that was dug out. Pack some snow in on top, place your foot over it strongly and pull up on the rope. It should now be wrapped around the tent stake (we actually used a short piece of bamboo as a stake) and you can pull it really tight and then tie it off with a trucker's hitch or some other knot. We did this for all 8 ropes attached to the tent (each side and each edge of the tent had one.)

After we had our primary shelter set up, we started working on a quinzhee snow hut. One of our teachers, Matt, a guide from Anchorage, Alaska, explained how the Quinzhee is built by Alaskan Indians. The snow isn't really good for building igloos, so they build these dome-shaped shelters instead. We took a bit of a shortcut by putting our sleep kits into a pile and covering them with the floors of the Scott tents. Matt is explaining in this photo how we will cover the pile with lots of snow.

For about an hour, we used shovels to dig up snow in a circle around and about 3 feet away from the pile. After we had put about a foot of snow on the top of the pile (and more is at the bottom), we packed it down with our shovels. We repeated the process several times because we needed about 3 feet of packed snow on the top of the pile. Matt would go around checking the thickness of the snow and give us some estimation of how much more we needed to throw on.

We were all getting pretty tired, but everyone really worked hard. Some people would break up the snow with the squared-end shovels and others would scoop it up and toss it on with the larger snow shovels and rounded-end shovels. Matt did the final test. We were finished with the piling of snow, so we left it to settle and solidify a bit.

Everyone walked around and looked at quinzhees and other structures from previous classes. The last class had a really nice entry-way to their quinzhee and a snow penguin on top. They also had a really nice snow wall, so we all knew we had some competition. The weather was still wonderful, so we were all enjoying ourselves. We saw sleeping trenches, snow sculptures and snow walls.

While we were walking around, Susan, our other instructor and a guide for Exum Guides in the tetons, was busy getting a start on the snow block quarry we would use to build our wall. She explained the process of cutting the snow in a regular grid with saws, first in one direction along a line and back in the opposite direction to get a really clean cut. To loosen a block, put a shovel at the bottom near where the cuts end in the deeper snow and stick it in then pry it up. The snow was perfect for blocks. So we got to work and built our snow wall perpendicular to the direction the major wind storms come from and close to our Scott tents. The really bad storms, also knows as Herbies, come from the South between Black and White Islands. Black Island got its name from having really dark volcanic soil and little snow cover. The snow is constantly being blown off the island. White Island is snow covered, as you might have guessed.

After we had a good start at the wall, several people began putting up the mountaineering tents. Those of us who have assembled many a different kind of mountain tent kept working on the wall. Before we finished everything, we went back to the quinzhee and someone dug a hole at the bottom and straight in so we could retrieve the sleep kits. Once we had all the kits out (and yes, the quinzhee stayed right where it was), we all sat in a circle on the sleep kits and discussed what would happen next. The instructors were going to leave and go back to their jamesway and leave us with some radios. We needed to finish putting up tents and building the wall, and then we could do what we wanted. There were a couple of trails to hike on the ice shelf and, of course, a lot of snow if anyone was feeling creative.