Snow Shelter

Almost every year my brothers and I build a snow fort when we have a snow day. After receiving this assignment, I was so excited that our snow-building skills would be coming in handy!  

Materials:

• Two shovels
• Sticks and tree branches
• Lots of snow!

Construction:

Since I live in an apartment, there wasn’t really a good place to build a shelter near me. So after enlisting the help of my brother Rob, we went to my aunt's house to build the shelter. We found a large snow bank at the top of her driveway that was composed of snow that had been pushed up by a plow, and decided to use this as a base for the shelter.  We started by digging a cave on one side of the snow bank.  Once we got fairly deep, I went to the other side and dug a cave where the exit would be, while Rob continued on the first entrance.  We switched sides several times, going back and forth between them until we broke through and met in the middle. After that, all that was left was to make the space bigger and cleaner.  We dug a path around the outside so both entrances could be reached easily without having to go through the cave every time.  We also found sticks by a cluster of trees near her house and used these to add a little decoration to the cave.  If I had had a tarp, I would have used it to create a floor for the shelter and pinned it up on either end to cover the openings.  However, even without this tarp, the shelter was fairly warm on the inside and did a good job of keeping out the wind.  It was big enough to fit both myself and my brother, and probably could have fit another person as well.  We really had fun building it and I was impressed to see what could be done with just snow!

Final Product:

A tour of the shelter.

A closer look at the inside of the shelter.

Rob and I in the shelter.