10 December, 1996

I attended snow school today. We learned about survival equipment and then went out to a more isolated site to learn how to make snow shelters, set-up field tents (called Scott tents after the explorer), and operate field stoves. The weather was beautiful: sunny skies and about 20F. We spent most of the afternoon construction snow shelters. We made an igloo out of cut blocks of snow/ice. We were also made a snow shelter by making a large pile of all of our gear and piling the snow on top. After we had about 2 ft. of packed snow on everything, we dug a hole in one side to remove the gear and then made a tunnel in the other side to be used as a door. Once inside, the floor was dug out so that it was about 3ft below the surface. The hole we made to remove the gear was filled in with snow and we used the tunnel to go in and out. We used the stoves to melt snow for water so that we could cook dinner. I spent the night in the snow shelter. Since the sun still made it very bright outside, the roof of the snow shelter had a deep blue shade from the refraction of the light as it passed through. It was pretty comfortable sleeping, except for the snoring of my companions.