February 17, 2004
Backyard Igloo
This is "sugar snow". If you take a handful of sugar and look at it, you'll see granules. That's what this snow is like, too. There are no snowflakes in it, just round little pellets. Old snow is often sugar snow, especially snow that has been through a number of freeze-thaw cycles. That's pretty much what it's been like around here.
Sugar snow is not good igloo building snow. Actually, it's crappy igloo building snow. Igloo building works best when you have fresh powder, and the snowflakes can lock together. I've built igloos out of powder, and I've made an igloo with sticky snow, but sugar snow is a challenge. The igloo building project on the weekend at Silent Lake never got past level 2.
The IceBox Igloo kit makers, however, claim that you can build an igloo in any kind of conditions, even in sugar snow. Well, time to put that one to the doubting Thomas test - as in, show me! And since Igloo Ed is around and I happen to have had him hostage at the farm, I got him to build me an igloo.
I, of course, had to go to work. So, being the delegator that I am, I suggested to Ed that HP would be happy to help (fortunately, HP is as easygoing as everyone else who hangs out at that farm...). Then I invited Stef and Nick over, and Fraser too when I ran into him on campus. By the time I got home from work, the igloo was well underway.
It takes a long time with sugar snow, though. The igloo builders (of which I was not one, I was in charge of dinner) worked well into the night with the use of Lorenz's utility light. The sugar snow requires a lot of "working up" - HP and Stef were using metal shovels to break up all the chunks with a combination of bashing and scraping. The idea is, apparently, to use friction to melt the very outside of the snow crystals. Then it can be packed. By Igloo Ed, sure, by me, probably not. But then, I wasn't helping. Fraser and I stood around while Ed packed, Nick held the utility light, and Boris the dog dug in the snow.
Sloooowly, the igloo neared completion. There was much talking (because Ed had to keep teaching new people as different people helped), goofing off (because, if Fraser and I were to stand around and do nothing, we had to at least make smart-mouth remarks), and a bit of Ed fuelling (at which time Fraser found his niche as the beer holder).
The igloo did get finished, though it was well past Malcolm's bedtime. He did, however, declare that his room is now for rent, since he is moving into the igloo. And he was out there checking it out before school this morning. So Igloo Ed proved his point - it may take a long time, but it's possible to build an igloo even with really terrible snow. Of course, he has to now go and do it all over again, this time in Waterloo for Adventure Guide's snowshoe demo.
Heh. The Tom Sawyer principle really works!