Making a Quinzhee - Tips and Tricks

Quinzhees

Overview Mounding and Waiting Carving Tips & Tricks

Tips & Tricks

Use a tarp, 6x6 or 7X9 is great, with 3ft long ropes at each end to move snow from the surrounding area to the quinzee.
Use a grain-type snow shovel, not a garden spade and not a 2 or 3 foot wide snow pusher.
Break all lumps with the back of a shovel.
Have two people hold one end of a single ski to knock the snow from the top of the quinzee, thereby rounding off the top. The top must look like an igloo, never like a teepee.
X-country skis make great measuring sticks. The average adult ski is approximately 6ft long; the three foot mark right behind the toe clip; and it's two feet from the heel plate to the back of the ski.

Insert the bottom row of the wall-thickness gauge sticks 1 to 1.5 feet up the wall. When hitting these last gauges, quit carving and drop the remaining lower wall directly to the floor.
Always carve from top to bottom, never from bottom to top.
The best interior carving tool is one of those small military-type entrenching tools whose shovel blade locks at 90 degrees to the shaft, making it look like a hoe.
Carving with a downward movement is much better than digging into the wall.
Always put the entrance and ventilation hole 90 degrees to the prevailing winds.

The basket on a X-country ski pole makes the perfect ventilation hole. Use the hand-grip of the ski pole to start the hole and the basket end to finish it off.
An L-shaped piece of wood inverted and pushed through near the top of the quinzee makes a perfect attachment piece for an overhead mini light.
Leave enough snow at the back as a sleeping platform - softer and warmer.
Use a bag or skidoo boots to stop wind from blowing in entrance. Do not completely block.
Use some of that leftover snow to make a couple of walls to protect the entrance from the wind.
Glow sticks make great nightlights