Right now, about half our youth group has wrapped up breakfast and are hauling gear through the snow back to the parking area. They've been spending the weekend in a (hopefully) snow-bound lodge in the mountains, enjoying the combination of cold weather skills and a warm, dry place to enjoy a fire and a full convenience kitchen.

Couldn't make the trip this year. Too busy trying to figure out what to do with one elk herd and one antelope herd.

Made it last year. And last year we had plenty of snow. Spent all of Saturday either gathering firewood, or building snow caves.

We found a tall, dense snowdrift only a couple hundred yards from the lodge, and set about tunneling into it. Finally ended up with five separate snow caves. Youngest son, wife's godson and I dug our cave to the right of center.

Now, I'd never dug a snowcave before, but had watched the process, been in the final result, and knew the basics. You want a small door, low in the cave. The important point is to have your sleeping berths higher than the highest point in your door. So that you sleep in the (relatively) warm airpocket that develops above the doorway.

And the dome of your cave should be rounded, so that condensation and snowmelt runs down the walls, rather than dripping down on you and your stuff. And you should poke some airholes through the ceiling.

Now, I have heard that it is impossible to suffocate in a snowcave. That the snow in the walls sublimates and provides a steady supply of oxygen. But I know that cannot be absolutely true. Otherwise no one would ever suffocate in an avalanche. There has to be some minimum amount of surface area necessary to provide the oxygen required for survival. Per person.

And I don't know what that minimum is. So we installed three small airholes in our cave.

Digging the caves was harder than expected. Ideally, you would dig horizontally into a snowbank, and then carve upwards to make the sleeping quarters. But our snow bank was only 2-3m tall, so we had to dig down about a meter or more to ground level first, then into the drift, then up. Hauling the snow up out of the doorway was the biggest pain.

Carving the doorway itself was tiring, laying on your back or side and carving snow out above and in front of you with a small shovel. And, of course, all the snow is falling on your face before you can shove it out towards your feet. Claustrophobic.

Really claustrophobic. Felt like you were intentionally burying yourself in snow. The three of us took shifts on that work.

Once you had carved some working space inside, it got easier. And, actually, more enjoyable. Certainly warmer than standing outside in the wind, hauling chunks of snow away. Not as dark as you would think, with light glowing in from the doorway. If you got overzealous, and filled the doorway with snow faster than the two outside people could haul it away, it got dark. But you could still see by the glow coming through the snow itself.

We did good work. A three-man cave, with a sleeping berth alongside each side of the entrance, and the third dug slightly off center into the back wall. Room for three comfortable people, with space for a candle. Most places our ceiling was at least 20cm thick. Our berths were at least 20cm above the top of the doorway, which was small.

Broke through the wall into the cave on our left once, but that was quickly patched. Neighbors to the right were nearly a meter away. Without conceit I can say ours was the best cave of the five. Neighbors to the right, guided by the snowcave "instructor" neglected to build sleeping berths at all. Just a big huge cavern, with the floor at ground level where all the coldest air would be. They slept on folding cots, and said they made it okay, but I remember an elder leader's advice that "all a cot does is make you as cold on the bottom as you are on the top."

Neighbors on the left forgot to build their berths higher than the door, but they blockaded their door with a sled and shovel, so that kept most of the cold air out. Next cave over was too low to even have berths, and they abandoned it. One team member to the lodge, the other into the last cave. This last cave had the lowest ceiling. I could not lay on my side without brushing my shoulder against the roof (had to inspect them all before letting folks spend the night in them, you know). And really no elevation to the berths at all. But they put a leader and three youths in there all night. And survived. (Not comfortably, I might add.)

I had our cave alone for the night. Wife's godson was fighting off the flu, and collapsed in a bunk in the lodge before dinner was over. And slept straight through to morning.

Youngest son had managed to garner the bed immediately adjacent to the pot-bellied wood stove in the lodge, and there was no way he was going to give that up for sleeping in snow.

Will try to write about the night in the cave later. Just wish I had been on the trip this year, instead of here on this machine...