Quintze Hut

[Dutchess]

By Kevin Cupp

Properly constructed, this poor man's igloo can be body-heated to above freezing on a 20-below day, higher if you
light a candle.
Step One Build up snow to a depth of at least 8 inches and pack it down to make a floor.
Step Two Heap loose snow onto the floor. Piling the snow over a backpack or mound of branches will let you
create a hollow, which hastens the excavation process, but it isn't necessary. Let the snow consolidate for an hour
or more, until it is set up hard enough to form snowballs.
Step Three Tunnel through the mound at opposite ends to dig out the center efficiently, fill in the unused
entrance, and crawl inside to shape the interior. Ideally, the quintze should be narrow at the foot end, with a bed
long enough to lie down on, and just tall enough at the head end for you to sit up. The walls and roof need to be at
least a foot thick (check this with a stick).
Step Four Poke out an air vent overhead and dig a well at the entrance for the cold air to settle into. Cut a snow
block for a door. Glaze interior walls with a candle to prevent dripping.

[PineMartyn]

As someone who has winter camped in snow shelters since his boyhood, mostly in quinzhees, and in igloos in recent years, I thought I should offer a few corrective remarks to this posting as there are some parts that are mistaken and some that are vague and need elaboration.

The first part is correct. The temperature in a quinzhee snow shelter is a function of many variables (outdoor temperature, interior air volume of the shelter, moisture content of the air, number of bodies inside, and other heat sources, from candles to stoves), but typically the interior temperature hovers around the freezing point. In fact, I have never had water freeze overnight in any snow shelter I've built.

Regarding Step One:
It is not necessary to pack snow to a depth of 8" to make a floor. One does need to pack down what will be the floor area so that the snow pile can be made on a firm foundation, but no particular purpose is served by making sure there's 8" of snow to pack first. In any case, the height of the floor or sleeping shelf is determined during the excavation phase of the build and can be significantly higher. Higher is better as one wants one's sleeping shelf to be high relative to the entrance tunnel so that the tunnel will serve as the cold sink where cold air will pool.

Regarding Step Two:
Piling snow on top of packs or other bulky objects does create a void that could, in principle, speed the excavation process, but whenever I have tried it, it has not done so. Depending on what you put in the snow pile, it can slow you down as one must take care not to puncture one's pack when excavating with a sharp stick, long knife, or trowel. These are the best tools for excavating in such confined space. There is too little room to use a shovel effectively, unless the shovel blade detaches from the handle and the shovel's blade is small. Using piles of branches to create a void would make it especially difficult to excavate around them to free them from the sintered snow. Every time I have tried incorporating objects in a quinzhee to save time, it has made the process fussier, more frustrating, with more effort expended than usual, and resulted in negligible time savings. It's worth experimenting with however.
The article also says to let the snow "set up until it is hard enough to form snowballs". This might just be an unfortunate choice of words or it may betray an unfamiliarity with how snow sinters. Any snow type, from freshly fallen powder, to wet snow, to dry and granular sugar snow, and even bead-like depth hoar, will eventually sinter or "set up hard" after being agitated and redeposited by shoveling, but only fresh powder or wet snow will form into snowballs. So, the snowball test is just irrelevant. After an hour, two hours, or more, depending on snow type and temperature, the snow pile will have sintered up into one large mass of snow and so can be excavated. The way to test this is to just start tunneling in a bit.

Regarding Step Three:
The description for hollowing out a quinzhee in the original article is actually inadvisable. When hollowing out a quinzhee, one never wants to create a tunnel that goes straight through and then widen or open it up overhead. Doing so means that one has removed the most material through the very center of the snow pile while leaving the greatest load of snow overhead for later. This is the way you tunnel if you want to maximize the chances of a collapse. The safe way to excavate a quinzhee is to tunnel in a bit, then begin tunneling up, removing snow from above you, thus lessening the overhead snow load, and then tunneling in a bit farther, then removing more snow overhead, and so on, gradually opening up a cavity inside but never having a heavy overburden. This reduces the chances of a collapse and ensures that if a collapse should happen, you will not have a huge volume of sintered snow landing on you. A collapse, especially if you're alone under a heavy load, can be fatal, as it can pin you, force the air out of your lungs, and make it impossible for you to even inhale with a heavy snow load atop your back. Excavating in the manner I described has the added advantage that your floor or sleeping shelf will already be raised relative to the entrance, since you don't tunnel in horizontally, but diagonally, up into your snow pile at first, before leveling off as you move deeper into the pile.

Below is a series of photos of my wife making a quinzhee.

Note how after digging in only a little way she is kneeling upright and has begun removing snow from above.
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In this photo you can see she is raised relative to the camera, which is down in the entry tunnel. She has tunneled up at an angle, so she's already on a raised sleeping platform, and now continues tunneling deeper into the pile, but always removing material above her as she proceeds deeper into the snow pile.
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Seated comfortably on the raised shelf, she continues opening up the cavity. Note that she's wearing rain gear. Quinzhee building is wet work, even in freezing cold conditions, as one is crawling in snow and has snow falling on one the whole time one is excavating. Pacing oneself is necessary so as not to get sweaty when dressed in waterproof gear.
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The quinzhee is completed, except for a little smoothing of the walls. This quinzhee was roomy enough to accommodate my wife, me, and our dog. Note the golf ball sized vent hole. You don't need a bigger whole than that. There is plenty of air inside. Most moisture will escape through the vent and plenty of fresh air will enter. Too large a hole will negate the heat-trapping effect of the quinzhee.
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Another corrective remark is that the walls and roof do not need to be "at least a foot thick". They can safely be half as thick, provided one does not have too much snow directly overhead. The heavier your roof, the thicker the walls need to be, and the sooner your quinzhee's roof will begin to sag downward. However, from the standpoint of insulation, thicker is better. But, invariably, unless you devote a long time and do a lot of crawling in and out to check your work, your walls will end up much thicker near the base, will narrow considerably higher up the wall, and the overhead roof thickness will likely be thicker than the thinnest parts of the walls. It's almost impossible to make the walls and roof of a quinzhee have uniform thickness, even using sticks, unless one first makes the exterior shape in a proper igloo shape and then hollows out the same interior shape. This is quite hard to do without quite a bit of fussing around and is more than one needs to do for a survival shelter.

Regarding Step Four:
The advice about glazing the interior walls is good, but it will do exactly nothing to prevent dripping. Dripping in a snow shelter happens because body moisture, exhalation, and heated water from cooking, condenses on irregular interior surfaces. To prevent this one must take pains to smooth the walls as much as possible to produce gentle arcing surfaces. As for what is meant by 'glazing', it just means lighting a candle inside the quinzhee, leaving the shelter before putting in a vent hole, closing the door up, and letting the candle warm the interior for approximately an hour. This will cause the interior surfaces to warm and soften a bit, at which point the door is opened, the candle snuffed, and a small vent hole made in the roof, allowing the trapped heat to rush out the door and vent hole so the interior surfaces can harden into a thin veneer of ice-like snow. The advantage of this is that when you move around in the shelter and brush up against the walls, you won't be dislodging loose snow onto yourself and your bedding. But condensation drips will only be avoided if the walls and roof are smooth so that condensation will run down the walls, instead of dripping off irregular points.

Hope this helps,
- Martin

[BENESSE]

Simply fascinating!!!!
Thank you both for posting, now wish there was a way to try it.

[1stimestar]

How do you normally remove the snow from inside? I mean, do you put it on a small tarp and drag it out, in a bucket, or just pack most of it down underneath. Obviously some has to be removed from inside the structure. What have you found to be easiest without scraping the sides?

[PineMartyn]

How do you normally remove the snow from inside? I mean, do you put it on a small tarp and drag it out, in a bucket, or just pack most of it down underneath. Obviously some has to be removed from inside the structure. What have you found to be easiest without scraping the sides?

Excellent question 1stimestar.
It depends on whether you are building one alone or with a partner.

With a partner:
The excavator begins by shedding as much clothing as possible, and dons whatever waterproof gear there is to wear. This is so the he or she will remain dry from contact with snow and so as to limit sweating and so will have warm dry clothes to get back into afterward. It's counter-intuitive, but the danger here is overheating, not freezing, as you excavate.
The partner, who remains outside the snow pile with shovel at the ready in case of a collapse, should add layers of clothing, as he or she will not be moving around as much. Part of the outside partner's responsibility is to remain by the entrance tunnel in case of a collapse, especially in the early stages. If the outside partner wanders even a couple of feet away, he or she won't be able to hear the person inside. Snow shelters of all sorts are almost completely soundproof. I have been in snow shelters when horrific winds were blowing outside, and could not hear them at all. You will sleep in complete silence in a quinzhee every time.

The outside partner's other responsibility is to clear the entrance tunnel of loose snow that is being dug out by the excavator. If no shovel is available, a snowshoe or whatever else was used as a shovel during the pile-building phase can be used. The excavator just carves out the inside, lets the snow fall, and pushes it behind himself or herself with his or her hands and feet. It's very slow and awkward at first because there's so little elbow room, so the outside person often has to reach into the entrance with mitted hands and pull out snow that way. Once the cavity opens up atop the shelf, things begin going a lot faster. Snow that falls onto the shelf is just kicked and swept down toward the entrance tunnel and the outside person reaches into the entrance tunnel with the shovel and shovels it out.

I should mention that the edge of the sleeping shelf closest to the entrance tunnel often gets chewed up and eroded by all this activity, but it doesn't matter. It can be rebuilt when most of the excavation is complete, and within an hour or so, it will sinter up hard again.

To keep warm and remain right by the entrance, the outside person should also build protective wind walls with the snow that is removed from the inside. One can make two low, parallel walls jutting out from each side of the entrance, about a foot or two long, as if one were extending the entrance tunnel outward. This helps reduce cold air blowing across your doorway. Just dump the snow where it needs to go, and after it sinters (which can take hours), carve walls straight from the piles using the shovel. A taller wall of snow about 3-4 feet high and perhaps 4-5 feel long is built a few feet away from the quinzhee, but perpendicular to the short parallel walls. This larger wall serves to block winds that might blow directly into the quinzhee's doorway. This wall is built from surrounding snow as well. If you flatten off the top of this wall, you now have a table/counter upon which can cook, lay your gear, etc. Here's a photo of me making my supper on the counter/windwall in front of my snow shelter (directly behind me, out of frame, is an igloo). Note that I have cut the counter into the wall after it sintered up, so there's wind protection around my stove to save on fuel and I don't have to bend, stoop, or crouch to do my cooking.
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Working alone:
Building a quinzhee alone is a lot more work, but one needn't make it as roomy. You don't need to stand in your quinzhee or accommodate more than just yourself. Just you and your necessary night gear go inside. The rest of your gear stays outside. The smaller the quinzhee, the easier it is for your body heat to warm up that volume of air. However you want to be able to stretch out comfortably without the head or foot of your sleeping gear touching the walls, and you want sufficient headroom so you can sit cross-legged or when resting your buttocks on your heels when kneeling. This is important because you will want to get up at night to pee, to grab a snack when cold, get in and out of clothing layers, and in very bad weather, you may need to cook inside your quinzhee.

When building solo, you need to do a lot of crawling in and out (backwards), dragging snow out with you. There's no pretty way to do this. It's just awkward and inefficient, but only the first third is really frustrating. After that, you will welcome the opportunity to crawl down into the cold well and fling snow out of the tunnel and crawl out yourself to stretch out and build up some snow walls. It's important to get out, stand up, unzip your rain gear to vent moisture, and walk around otherwise you will overheat and get sore from being on your knees digging in snow for so long. Going outside frequently will also help with the feeling of claustrophobia that can set in when first tunneling in. By the time you are on the shelf and opening up the cavity, there will be plenty of elbow room and daylight will pour in through the walls, so you won't feel enclosed. But that first 45 minutes is a bit nerve-wracking because it's cramped, rather dark, and the snow you carve out falls all over you and you get that buried feeling unless you back out and drag out snow with you frequently.

With respect to smoothing the interior, there is one tool that works better than anything in the world: A gloved or mittened hand. Just rub your hand over the rough spots. It's not ice, just snow. Smoothing bumps and irregular surfaces is no harder than eroding a snowball would be by rubbing it. The snow that scrapes off and rains down inside is then pushed into the little ruts and pits in your floor/sleeping shelf and packed down to make a nice level floor. I should mention that every minute you spend smoothing your walls will be well spent, because you will have condensation drips if you don't do it, and that can lead to a wet sleeping system by morning. If the walls are smooth, moisture will either be absorbed by the snowy walls (slowly turning the structure into ice) or condense onto it and run down, freezing as it goes, depending on temperatures, moisture content, and glazing. If you don't glaze your shelter, it will be glazed by morning from the remarkable amount of moisture that you expel during the night. The only time it doesn't happen is when it's very mild out (close to freezing for above).

One trick I use when I'm going to be cooking in a quinzhee (which releases an unholy amount of moisture inside) is to dig out a narrow 6" trench in the floor all around the inside perimeter of the wall, where the wall meets the floor. This creates a ring all around me that is lower than me, where cold air will puddle and condensation will settle after running down the walls. But this isn't necessary, it's just a little optimizing tweak.

I hope this helps,
- Martin