Of Snow Battles, Snow Caves, and Other Things Relating to Snow

We were very blessed during our time in Canada that both of our winters there were colder and snowier than usual for that region. Seeley's Bay is half an hour north of Kingston, but still close enough that Lake Ontario tends to keep things warmer. Thankfully for us, we got as much snow as we could possibly want, and both times before Christmas. Huge amounts of our time were spent outside building forts, caves, and snowboard runs. Being right next to the church parking lot, we consequently received huge amounts of snow in the perfect places. Snow banks twenty feet (4 meters) high were piled up and left right next to our house. These afforded great sledding and snowboarding hills, especially with the addition of jumps at the bottom. We also used them as heights to lob snowballs down on an opposing team. Adding to the height of the snow hills were two ditches just beneath them. We would sled from the top of a hill into the bottom of a ditch. Not exactly up to par with skiing, but it entertained us well. The rest of our time outside (on a regular day we spent at least an hour) was filled with sculpting, hacking, and moving snow. Our first snow fort was a single wall stretching from our porch at the back of our house to an extending, covered staircase that came up and out from our basement. This protruded about a dozen feet from the wall, and was roughly the same length as the porch. We recognized this immediately as a possible place for an awesome fort, that could be built without huge amounts of effort. In December of 2013 me, Johnny, our Dad, and to some extent Sarah set out to build it. If memory serves correctly, we finished it just after Christmas, before heading to Florida so my parents could fund-raise and take a course (while we had a blast). It had several low places were we could throw snowballs through, and covered the entire space between the porch and the staircase, save for a small door. The walls were at least a foot thick, and made out of hardened snow drawn from the piles the snow plow left. It was very sturdy, and we could lean on it without its breaking. It was reinforced with sticks standing vertically in the structure, and sections of logs formed the base. Sadly, we never got to have the cool snowball fights we were anticipating, as it mostly melted during our trip to Florida. Still, building it was a ton of fun. This was really our only major project in 2013, but greater things were yet to come in the next winter.

Me (middle), my Dad, and Johnny in front of our first snow fort.
Greater things are yet to come.

The next winter proved to be even more fruitful and snowy than we could have hoped for. I will start with our smallest accomplishments, and work my way up to our biggest.
Several thaws afforded great snowman weather, and we took advantage of them. Once we built a whole family, with life sized parents and two kids. Our largest and best-remembered was a monolithic one that was over six feet tall. Me and Johnny had immense difficulty getting balls that big to roll. To get it up to that height we stacked four balls stacked on top of each other in. The bottom one was waist height. I really had to strain to get that one to move! Despite this initial difficulty, the second ball was harder. It was super heavy, and would have been impossible to for me and Johnny to lift with our hands. To overcome this, we stuck shovel handles through its middle and hoisted it up. The first two balls split through the middle from the shovels, but the third remained whole. The other two snowballs proved less difficult to hoist, although the last required a chair for us to stand on to reach the top.

Our second coolest that year was one that we carved into the snow bank, starting at the end closest to us and working our way in. The whole thing was like an series of caves and tunnels without roofs. We began by digging a tunnel into the side of the bank, and then widening and deepening that into our first room. This deep enough that I could lay down in in, and deep enough that I could not see over the rim. In fact, we dug down until we hit the frozen soil. After that, we continued the process by making another room and corridor connecting the two rooms. We had begun work on the third room when tragedy struck. We had neglected to tell the the snowplower to avoid the part of the snow bank with our fort in it. Consequently, he pushed the whole pile back to make room for more snow while we were in Kingston. It plunged us all into a state of despair for the day. This is the reason I don't have a picture of it. However, it left more time for us to perfect our final and greatest snow accomplishment.

Johnny at the opening of our cave. This pic puts the size of our cave in perspective.

We have now arrived at the best part of this post; our cave. We used a similar method as the fort I previously described, however, we covered the roof of this one. We essentially dug a corridor straight into the snow bank next to our house, and then widened it into a keyhole shape. Once we had accomplished this, me and Johnny laid branches from the pine forest next to our house across the top. these were followed by smaller and smaller branches, making a sort of thatch that caught our next snowfall. Our fort was thus roofed, without the hazard (real or imagined) of the roof caving in. After a couple of weeks of expanding our cave from the inside, Johnny had an idea that gave birth to our greatest invention in snow construction. He tried to build a fire in the back of the cave. There was no danger of the wooden roof being fired, because the wood was wet, and covered by snow. Our expectations were fulfilled, when the cave filled with smoke so thick we couldn't stay in it for long. but that led to a greater idea, this time on my part. We worked for two full afternoons driving a hole down through the ice into the cave at the back. This was no wider than our icepick (six inches across). One of us would shove the pick down the hole, and chip up the ice at the bottom, then the other would stretch their arm down the hole and scoop out the loose ice chips. Finally we penetrated down to the cavern, and had completed our chimney. We then built a fire at the bottom,  which burnt beautifully, and almost all of the smoke escaped. Us and our friend Greg roasted marshmallows in our cave. We built several fires in our cave, which melted the chimney wider. Although some of the snow melted each time, it was cold enough that it didn't melt too much. There was no danger of it collapsing either, as you'll remember. Building snowforts is one of my best memories of Canada, and something that I miss living in Malawi.

Our snow cave from the front. We added chicken feed bagsfilled with snow to the front in order to make the opening smaller. Notice how the top is completely camouflaged. The cave extends to the the peak of the snow hill.

                                 

                                             Me and my sister Sarah roasting marshmallows in front of the fire.

Our fire viewed from the top of our chimney.