Snow Caving!

Cory and I spent my birthday weekend on a snowshoeing/snow caving trip up American Fork Canyon about an hour south of Salt Lake City. The trip was offered through UVU and about 11 of us went! The trip included a brief snowshoeing trip up into the mountains, and then we spent the rest of the daylight digging out a snow cave! For the 11 of us, there were three caves, and ours fit six!

A snow cave is designed to stay intact all night (and even over a week!), trapping in warm air from bodies and keeping cold air out (the entrance is built at an angle to make this possible). Unfortunately, while our cave was big enough for six people, we didn't take into account all the extra body heat this would create. The six of us woke up at about 5 AM to find that our ceiling had dropped roughly 9 inches! While we thought it better to wait until the sun was up before venturing out into the cold, one of our companions said "It's like being in a freezer...that is getting smaller!" and we all bailed. Once out of the cave, we found that it had snowed several inches over night, blocking our airholes that were made to let just enough warm air to escape so the snow cave doesn't melt or sink. Luck for us, just after we got out, the ceiling of our snowcave started dripping so badly it was as though it was raining inside!

Outside in the dark, we made breakfast and coffee, and went for walks to keep warm. All in all, it wasn't so bad, because we knew we only had a couple hours before the sun came up and it got warmer out! On the way down the mountain, we got to play with avalanche beacons, tracking down and digging out "people" (beacons in bags of clothes) buried under the snow along the trial home.