Quinzee Building

Step 2 Build up a big pile of snow

Figure out just how big your quinzee needs to be: get everyone that you want to fit in it, to lie down in the area you've just cleared out & make sure everyone fits! Add a foot or two all the way around and that'll be the diameter of your quinzee. Easy.

Keep shoveling on snow until the base of the pile is as big as you need it to be. Once you're done, it'll look pretty conical (perhaps even comical), so feel free to use your shovels to round it into a nice dome shape.

Comments

[emehollin]

skrubol has it right. My kids and I built a 3-man version in Michigan back in the 1980s after reading a how-to article in the local paper. We piled all the snow out of our backyard (we had 19 feet of snow that year), let it sit over night to crystalize, stuck in a bunch of twigs and started hollowing it out. As soon as we came across one of the twigs, we stopped digging and changed direction until we came to another twig. It lasted for weeks and was strong enough for my son, age 5 at the time, to climb all over the outside.

[powercow244]

sweet. Michigan isn't getting much snow over here... i tried building a quinzee this year... i tried

[jrbout]

Isn't that the truth!

[emehollin]

That winter we had 19 feet of snow. I shoveled my driveway twice a day from Thanksgiving until Easter. Maybe you'll have better luck next winter.

[flamesami]

another version is this: make a pile of branches on the base part, cover it with a tarp, then shovel on the snow and stamp it down. This makes it a lot easier to hollow out and gives a more compact wall to your quinzee

[skrubol]

A trick I've used is to get a bunch of 1 foot long small sticks and poke them through the surface of the quincy just after you finish piling up the snow.  Then when you're shoveling out you have a good indicator as to when the wall is the right thickness.