It's a Quinzee!!!!

Snow Quinzee!!!

Video tour of the quinzee

I built a quinzee! (Ya, I still don't have a Nintendo Wii...)

They're pretty easy to make:

1. Make a big pile of snow (the dry powdery stuff, not the wet stuff like the first snowfall)


2. Let it sit overnight (no packing or water required)


3. Dig out the inside (stop digging when you start to see light through the walls)

It's one of the bigger ones that I've made. I figure you can fit 4 people inside. Rather cramped, and the people have to be my size, but 4 people.

The snow piling took about an hour. It was harder than it looked b/c shoveling snow on grass is hard. You can't just shovel normally otherwise you rip out the grass and there was only a few inches of snow cover, so there wasn't much to scoop up. The excavation took me about 2 hours today. It would've been easier if someone was outside to shovel away the dug out snow, rather than me trapping myself inside :). It was rather surreal just sitting inside the quinzee with the entrance blocked. The world just disappeared as it was eerily silent. The snow is translucent, so it was still light enough to see inside the quinzee.

With the huge amount of snow I excavated, I decided to convert the bachelor apartment quinzee into a 1 bedroom! I'll dig it out this weekend.

1 bedroom quinzee suite available for rent Jan. 2007

Quinzee building has turned into a bit of a tradition for me. My older sister taught me and my younger sister how to build one after she learnt how in winter camp, which would've been like 1989 or 1990.

"Snowman Quinzee" 2002 (some rotten kids kicked it in) and Quinzee 1991 (there's a picture of Lucky inside of it, but I can't find it right now)