Mt. Rainier - Let's Buid an Igloo

This past weekend I went snow camping went some friends on Mt. Rainier in Washington state. This was my first adventure camping during the winter. Our goal for the trip was to build an igloo and have fun. Here I'm sharing a couple of pictures from our journey.

First we had to snowshoe to our campsite. Hiking through the snow on an unbroken trail is quite tiring similar to walk through deep mud. As you take a step your foot sinks about 2 feet down in the snow; you have to left your foot two feet up over the surface of the snow before taking the next step. We failed to figure out how deep the snow was but we know that it was over eight feet deep. Once we arrived at your determined campsite location, we had to compact the snow by repeatly walking over an area. Using a saw we cut out blocks of compacted snow to build the igloo. Our igloo was over six feet tall and ten feet in diameter. It took us four hours of none stop work to build. The work was tough and tiring--lots of sweating and heavy breathing. After the igloo was complete we all agreed that we didn't feel the need to have the experience of building an igloo again. My recommendation for anyone who attempts to do this: start constructing your igloo in plenty of time before sundown, bring three pair of gloves so that you can change them as they get wet inside, and put clean snow inside igloo before you completely build it so that you can melt the snow for water.