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We started a bachelor pad off the side of the modest
igloo, and determined that the tunnel construction is by far the most
efficient. This is about 5-minutes worth of work, and is about at
the occupancy point. It is easy to start at one end with a solid
wall that resembles a tombstone, and build the sides arched up over it,
working your way down the line. It would be easier to make a long,
skinny igloo like this divided up into apartments than to try to make one
big round room, and this is a much more efficient use of
space.
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It helps to level the floor out as you go along,
rather than having to crawl all the way in. The tunnel was
narrowed and turned toward the side at the end to keep any wind from
blowing in. The roof looks fragile, but held several people
standing on it in the morning.
The tunnel shape is a much more efficient use of space, as you
end up with a square floor and straight walls, rather than the
curved floor and tipped-in walls of the round igloo. In the
tunnel, you can bring your pack in and lean it against the
wall. |
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If we had built the tunnel igloos from the beginning, we
could have easily housed the whole troop in it within an hour and a half.
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Two of the older scouts decided to build a fortress
connected to a big boulder on top of a hill. They did it in an
amazingly short amount of time.
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The inside was fitted out with two beds, a foot well,
and storage space for their packs. The night was crisp and clear
with a billion stars, and one of the scouts was playing his cedar Indian
flute around 9:30 at night that gave the evening an eerie, magical tone
that made us thankful and content to be sleeping in the California snow.
However, in the morning, the two scouts in the fortress
made the mistake of sleeping in until 9:00 AM, which prompted a snowball
assault from some members of the troop. But the fortress proved to
be almost impregnable (and it didn't hurt that both older scouts had
deadly snowball aim). |
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Big Bear Lake, Circa mid-1970's
Although this was a great snow year for Big Bear, it
wasn't even close to the coldest. Above is a photo of me (blue
jacket) standing on the ice in the mid-1970s. My mom wrote on the
caption on the back of the photo that the ice was 9-12 inches thick, and I
remember seeing 3-wheel ATCs driving around the lake ice with big fat
tires. Apparently there was a regular ice-skating rink at Stillwells
for years. The ice hasn't been this thick for a long time. |
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