Snow Fort:More Lessons

The most important lesson in shelter building: Site Selection!

We built our shelter right at the street and, about 9pm last night, the village sent out the plows and one of them demolished the entire front of our shelter. He had to actually come up into the driveway to make as much damage as he did.

When building a potentially life-saving shelter you should remember that flowing water, avalanche, mudslide, falling branches, and animal trails will all ravage you shelter if you fail to adequately avoid them.

Clearly a shelter built into a snow bank against the street is going to have a very limited lifetime. I'm glad that nobody decided to test out the shelter last night.

The kind of snow we've had over the past couple of days has bent trees and dropped branches. It rained, snowed, rained, froze, and snowed some more. The bent trees would not have been a consideration during the initial site selection but would now be a factor should the snow cause the trunk to snap.

As long as this weather holds for another few days I think I'll get the kids out to help me build a quinze. This time we'll build it in the yard so we can avoid the plows.

Thanks for reading,


B