Quinzhee 2.0: Snow Coffin

I lived in a quinzhee for about three weeks last winter and it was pretty excellent. To build it, however, required a lot of work.

I recently discovered Peter Wiinholt's (unfortunately named) snow coffin, which you can make as long as your land has both snow and trees. Rather than make a big pile and hollow it out as in a quinzhee, you dig out a horseshoe shape a bit longer than you are and wider, too. Use the dug out snow to form walls following the horseshoe curve. The round end is where your head goes. You can build up your bedding while it's open. You then build up the roof with branches, sticks, boughs, etc, then cover with snow when it's relatively well impenetrable.

Peter lists the following benefits over the standard quinzhee:

• A good snow coffin could be made in one to two hours
• The entire snow coffin can be made while standing outside of it. At no point do you have to crawl inside it to work. Also, a smaller mass of snow has to be moved to complete the construction.
• Properly made, the snow coffin cannot possibly collapse, meaning that it is a more dependable and safe structure.

Here's a link to the full description of the method and result: [Link]