Track notes:

Preparing a Snow Cave from scratch!

An Essential item is a snow shovel. 

This is my Ortovox Kodiak Snow Shovel. If you want to see  review on it, I did one ages ago, here it is here:

It's not practical to try and build a snow shelter with  just with gloved hands. If you are finding yourself in a situation where you need to build a shelter made with snow and you don't have a snow shovel then, seriously you could be screwed!

Firstly, no matter how good your gloves are your hands after a while will get too cold and or wet. You can not pack the snow quick enough with just the area of your hands and this will quickly lead to fatigue, assuming you are in a desperate situation to build such a shelter. Also unless your arms of of non-human length you will not be able to reach to the centre of the construction in oder to tap down the snow properly. You could use a branch if no shovel.

Venturing into the snow many kilometres without a suitable tent is crazy if you do not carry a reliable snow shovel. Obviously if you are on skis, things can still go wrong if the ski trip is remote.

Do not build the entrance/exit facing in the direction for which descending cold air from a mountain side can fill your shelter. Make sure the shelter has floor with enough slope in order for CO2 not to build up within the shelter. In other words ventilation is key if you are not to fall asleep permanently. 

Unless the snow is hard and one can cut blocks easily and unless you are well-practiced with building an igloo from snow blocks, my advice is to forget about building such a shelter.

Now for the hardest part!

Try and find a area to build your shelter which will not be in danger of getting so much snow on top of it you can not get out of it. In this video I constructed my shelter against a steeply sloping snow covered earthen bank near a small river. If you can do this it will be "one less side" to think about when building it and of course you will need to shovel less snow too!

Mark out, or approximate a rough circular base. Mark it out with some icy snow blocks if you can, then depending upon how many people you have with you, start to build a big big conical mound of snow. You MUST pack it down, especially if the snow is soft and not very adherent (on other words if you try to make a snow ball and it just falls apart). This is very important the packing because this will help tp prevent the shelter from collapsing and burying you alive!

  If you are fit and have a snow shovel, one adult should be able to make a snow shelter in less than one hour MAX! Once the conical structure is built, start to carve a low ground level tunnel into it. Do this at first by NOT entering it but use your shovel at it's maximum extension. The reason is you have to make sure the tunnel walls are tapped down thoroughly to cause some slight melting and proper bonding of the snow/ice.

Make it big enough to just enter it and gradually start to carve out the ceiling area being carful to keep the roof in a DOME shape for maximum strength. You can use your hands to carve out the interior although practice using you shovel is better; OR use a wide piece of wood or even a small trowel if you carry one (like the ones used to dig a hole to take a dump in the wilds-make sure it is clean of course!).

You can further bank up the entrance BUT do not completely cover it! The idea is to protect yourself from freezing winds! To cover the entrance a bit use branches from evergreen pines (if available OR just build up walls made of snow obviously.

My advice if you are inside one of these things is to assume a position that you are never on your knees because if it caves in you will find it difficult to get up to create a space to start digging yourself out.

Finally, practice building these things not far from help and make sure you can reliably build one that will not collapse. The thickness will depend upon the type of snow you use and how hard you an pack it within a given time you have to build a shelter. remember wild animals could walk upon your shelter so it must be thick enough to handle them (if this could be an issue).

It's better to carry a snow tent obviously. But like all things better to be prepared eh?

Do this at your own risk!

BCT

Addendum:

What made me think about doing this?

Well I guess looking at the number of people one day on a metro, all going to a stupid shopping mall and everyone of them looking like they would be hard pressed to light a fire even if you gave them a box of matches in order to save themselves. I was the only one out of approximately 450 passengers who was destined for the mountains (transport from the last metro station (which also happens to be at a giant mall). I also must have been the oldest person there too. yes there were  couple of snow boarders and one skier waiting to catch the bus but that was it. Clearly young people are more interested in shopping, and to be honest not one of the few hundred I eye balled as I left the station looked like they even knew where milk came from LOL.. Ok now you can call me a pensioner LOL!