Day 3 :: Build an Igloo

The progress of the igloo, with my assistant, Addie

The sleeping bag and blankets Addie brought out to me in case I got too cold

The snow block quarry

The unfinished igloo at the end of the night

For various reasons, I chose to switch some nights around. My marathon 3-hour walk will be moved to this coming Sunday (prior to the Super Bowl), my volunteer night at a soup kitchen (with my family) has been moved to the day the igloo was going to be created, and the igloo has found its way to being the main act for tonight.

As many of you are aware, tonight is a cold one… registering at about -10 degrees with wind chill. I don’t know if it’s because I’m still a bit green in my return to Minnesota, but as long as I’m dressed for it, I actually enjoy this type of weather. And luckily, so does my ‘polar bear’ daughter. She was my assistant.

I’m going to dive right into the technical aspect of this endeavor. Addie and I have actually built an igloo once before, about 2 years ago in Denver with my friend Mark. However, the snow that day was freshly fallen, and a bit on the wet side. It stuck together wonderfully and was easy to mold into blocks and then piece the igloo together.

I don’t know if many of you attempt snow ball fights or various sculpted attempts at masterpieces in your front yard this time of year… but, if I may say so, it’s near impossible. The snow is nothing but powder, and has no ‘sticking’ qualities whatsoever.

As it turns out though, we had attempted to create a snow structure earlier on in the year, and we had compacted some of the freshly fallen snow at that time. So, this time around, I’ve been able to dig below the powder and recycle some of those precious cubed feet of the golden stuff. Regardless, it was still ‘fragile’ at best, and tripled the amount of time it probably would have taken had the snow been a bit more on the wet side.

So, after three hours of hard labor, I have an unstable structure that someone resembles a half-built igloo. I’ve just about run out of the usable snow, and may not be able to complete it until we have warmer temperatures… hopefully causing the snow to compact with greater ease. Yet, if I find time within the remaining days of the challenge, I may continue to work on it… hoping to complete it in time for the night that I will be winter camping… in our backyard.