Six Feet Under: Winter Camping

Head outside the resort boundaries, build and sleep in your own snow cave under the stars before making fresh tracks back to resort the following morning.

It’s eerily quiet, six feet below the snow surface. Only the sound of Sam and Will’s breathing circulating around our snow cave. The strangest place I’ve ever slept? Definitely. I’m part way through Nonstop’s winter camping experience and so far it has been just that… an experience.

It began last night. We assembled at the Nonstop lodge where our guide Dave shared his precious knowledge on snow cave building techniques and the best ways of staying warm and dry when camping in the snow. We were distributed our kit which included, amongst other things, an arctic sleeping bag, a snow saw to cut bricks, a shovel to dig, a head torch and candles for light, and all essential avalanche gear. Once I’d stocked up on ingredients for a fireside dinner and snacks to keep me digging, I began to feel ready for the adventure ahead. 

It’s strange riding a chairlift with a large backpack, roll matt strapped to the outside and weighed down by the essentials of water and beer. We received a few strange looks as regular skiers clearly wondered whether we’d lost our minds. We felt like heroes but hadn’t achieved anything yet. Once we’d gathered at the top of the mountain we skied to the edge of the resort, ducked under the rope and into the so-called ‘slack country’. We needn’t travel far, just 15 minutes or so, as this excursion is intended to practice our survival skills, not depend on them. Once we found a suitable slope we dropped our packs, stuck our skis in the snow, and started scoping out the building sites for our snow caves.

On a gentle slope we dug a big trench, six-foot long and about neck deep. Sam started the digging while Will and I removed the loose snow Sam was sending up. After 40 minutes we crouched at the bottom of the trench and started to dig into the slope to create the cave we’d soon be calling ‘home’. Soon our hole became a space which became a cavern and before long, a veritable palace! We used our snow saws to add architectural features such as alcoves for candles and shelves to store our belongings. We used the shovel blades to ensure our ‘bed’ was flat, and to smooth off the ceiling so that the condensation from our breath would run down the walls instead of dripping onto us.

The light began to fade just as we were putting the finishing touches on our masterpiece. We crawled up and out into the open, where the other groups were gathering around a roaring campfire that ‘Nonstop Dave’ had somehow had time to create whilst also making his own snow cave and contributing to the digging of every other cave! The man is a machine.

We cooked wieners on sticks over the fire, washed them down with cold beer, and for dessert enjoyed s’mores, the classic North American campfire treat. The whole group seemed excited, if not a little apprehensive, for the night ahead and we spent a couple of hours around the heat of the flames exchanging stories of the afternoon’s excavations and anticipating the fresh tracks we were set to score on our ski down at dawn.

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