Living A Dream: SNOW CAMPING

So I finally got the chance to go snow camping this past weekend. I was kinda nervous about doing it because I get cold easy so I was afraid I was going to end up being freezing the whole night. Originally our plan was to snowshoe to Huckleberry Hot Springs and camp out there so that we could keep warm in the natural hot springs. However, after being the good citizens that we are and stopping in at the Ranger's Station for Grand Teton National Park we learned that not only could we not camp at Huckleberry hot springs but that camp fires were not allowed inside the National Park during the winter. Since obviously we weren't going to camp in 10degree weather with no camp fire we scratched that idea and opted to head over to the Slide Lake area in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. Slide Lake is a natural lake that was formed in the 1920's by a massive landslide. It's a pretty cool story how the landscape was formed in this area and you can read briefly about it by clicking HERE. Once we backtracked over to the Slide Lake area we strapped on our snowshoes and our packs and started out across the frozen lake in search of the ideal campsite to build a snowcave. We snowshoed across the lake and up a steep slope searching for a spot. It was by far one of the hardest hikes I've done in awhile. I felt like I was on a stairclimber because the slope we went up was so steep and the snow was so deep that each time I took a step I ended up sliding further back down then where I originally started from. Not to mention the fact that I had a pack on my back as well. It ended up taking us about an hour or so to find a place to camp and by that time we were all dripping in sweat. Once we found our camp spot we immediately went to work setting up camp. All I know is that setting up a winter campground is MUCH harder then a summer campground. For those of you who don't know, when you go snow camping you build a snowcave to sleep in instead of a tent . This sounded like a fun idea to me but it ended up taking us about 2 hours of physical labor to build the cave. Then when we went to sleep I kept freaking out thinking the snowcave was going to collapse on us and we were going to be buried alive. However, luckily for us it did not collapse and once we tested the strength of the snowcave the next morning we learned that it was much stronger then we originally thought. Once we finished our snowcaves we built a fire and cooked a nice warm pasta meal . It was super basic (noodles and sauce) but I was so hungry from all the work that it could have been dirt I was eating and it would have tasted good. After dinner we sat around the campfire and talked and tried to dry out all our base layers that got soaked with sweat earlier in the evening. We ended up sleeping 3 in one snowcave and 2 in another snowcave and being the nice person that I am I volunteered to sleep in the middle of the 3 person cave so that I would have body heat on both sides of me. Our cave was so small that the 3 of us barely fit. I had to sleep on my side because there was literally not enough room for me to lay on my back or stomach. I was really surprised how warm I actually was throughout the night. Of course I slept in 2 pairs of long underwear, my ski pants , my down jacket, a fleece sleeping bag liner and my big down sleeping bag. Outside the cave it was probably around 10degrees but it was around 30degrees inside the cave. The next morning we were planning on cooking breakfast but opted to just pack up camp and head back to the cars instead. But before we left we decided to see how strong our snowcave was. There were 3 guys jumping on top of the snowcave and it was not budging. We finally cut holes in the side of the cave until standing on it caused it to collapse. The hike back out was so much easier then on the way in. We quickly realized that we were unable to snowshoe back down the huge slope we hiked up the night before so instead we sat on our bottoms and just slide the whole way down. What took us 30minutes to hike up took us about 30seconds to get down. Grant you I had massive quantities of snow down my pants and up my jacket from sliding down but it was worth it. All in all it was a great experience and was a nice little tease of the camping and hiking opportunities here in Jackson and has made me look forward to summer all the more.

Below are some pictures of our snowcave. I will post more pictures of the trip and a video once I get them from the other people that went on the trip with us.

The 5 of us sticking our heads through the holes we cut in the snowcave.