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Why Build a Snow Trench Shelter?
Imagine you are out for a snowshoe or a backcountry ski, and you get lost, or a storm makes travel too dangerous, or your friend gets injured. You need a shelter, and fast. Luckily for you, you are surrounded by one of nature’s most convenient building materials.
Contrary to what your instincts might tell you, snow is a excellent insulator. While a snow shelter isn’t likely to get much warmer than 0° c, it probably beats whatever winter weather you are trying to hide from. Snow and ice shelters such as quinzhees, snow caves, and igloos have been used for millennia, and be rather roomy comfortable, but they also take a lot of time and energy to build.
Trench shelters are quick, effective, and can be built in many different snow conditions. They are not, however, very comfortable. If you have plans to stay overnight in a snow shelter for fun, I would recommend a snow cave or a quinzhee (see video below for how to build a quinzhee). With the right tools in your emergency kit, and maybe a little practice, a snow trench shelter should take less than an hour to build.
Some Helpful Tools
Mylar emergency blanket: I like to carry at least two with me, even in the summer. When wrapped around you, they will reflect your own body heat, preventing loss of precious heat. They can also be used to reflect heat from your fire, or can line the roof, walls, or floor of an emergency shelter. If you want to get creative, add tarp, signal, and fishing lures to a mylar blanket’s possible uses
Folding saw: This is a great addition to a winter emergency kit. Wood for making fires and shelters can be tricky since most of the dead wood is under the snow, and a saw makes collecting it a lot easier. You can make a trench shelter without branches, but they make building the roof and insulating the floor a lot easier.
Collapsible shovel: A shovel is a safety essential of you travel in avalanche terrain, but it can come in handy for any snow travel. I use mine to build a trench or a wall to protect myself from wind while I eat or rest. If you don’t have a shovel, bare in mind that it is important keep your hands warm and dry in a winter survival situation, so try to find something besides your hands to dig with, like a snowshoe.
Tarp: I carry a silicon 5’ x 7 poncho/tarp. A cheap alternative is to pack along one or two big, heavy duty garbage bag. An extra mylar emergency blanket could work too, though they aren’t particularly durable and could tear on a branch.
Get Building!
Step 1- Choose you Location
Choose where you want your entrance and what direction you want to lie. While sleeping with your feet close to entrance may keep you warmer, it will make for a slow exit if you need to get out quickly, so plan for your head to be near the entrance. You’ll want your entrance facing downwind, so take note of where any wind is coming from. A slight hill can make digging easier if the snow is deeper than six feet or so. Otherwise, find a level spot.
Step 2 – Break ground, err, snow
Dig a three foot hole where you want your entrance to be. Ground is a lot warmer than snow, so dig to the ground of you can.
Step 3 – Dig your trench
Now that you’ve gotten the right depth, it’s time to dig out the trench. It’s going to be up to your body to heat that space, so the smaller the better. Make it a little wider than shoulder width and around two feet longer than you body.
Pile snow up on the sides to make it a little taller (especially if the snow is less than three feet deep). If you have enough snow, pile it around the entrance as a windbreak too. If you get any big snow or ice chunks put them aside.
Step 4 – Lay the framework
Skis and ski poles make fantastic roofs, but even with them, extra branches will make it more stable and easy to work with. The important part here is to work with what you have or what you can find.
Step 5 – Lay down the tarp
If you have an extra emergency blanket, it could be a great addition here. Lay it down first. Try to spread your tarp so that the edges touch all the sides and secure it in place with anything you can find with weight; branches, ice blocks or packed snow will all work.
Step 6 – Bury it
Fluffy snow provides the best insulation, but use what you have. When I was building this trench shelter, I found a good ice layer, so I balanced them on my frame until the gaps were filled in, and then buried it in fluffier snow.
Step 7 – Add an air hole
Add a vent hole at the end or your trench by poking a stick under the tarp and wiggling it until it’s a inch or so in diameter. The entrance will probably provide enough air, but an extra hole for ventilation is still a good idea.
Step 8 – Insulate the floor
It may seem like it would make more sense to put the floor down before the roof, but roof building knocks down a lot of snow, so you’d likely find yourself rebuilding the floor anyway. Lay down green fir or spruce bows, or whatever you can possibly find to add space between you and the snowy floor. I used a sleeping mat for this shelter because I didn’t want to damage the trees in my yard. After the snow is totally covered, lay down your emergency blanket. It works best with some space between you body and the blanket, so add another layer of branches. They will also help the blanket stay in place.
Step 9 – Get cozy
Crawl in and fold any of the rest of the emergency blanket over you. If you have an extra, and it’s not in the roof, you can out it on top of you. Move you pack, or whatever else you can find, into the doorway to block the wind. Don’t make it airtight though; you need oxygen.
Never place the emergency blanket over your head. At worst, it could this cause suffocation; at best, it will cause moisture buildup that will keep you cold.
Some final thoughts
This could be modified for two people by making it wider, but still keep it as small as possible.. The closer you are to your friend, the warmer the both of you will stay.
As I mentioned, this is not a comfortable shelter. It’s hard to move around, or get in and out. Being alone in the dark, in a confined space, buried in snow is not something that I imagine a lot of people enjoying. Trench shelters do, however, get you our of the elements and give you something warm to lie on.
Another thing to remember is that no shelter will ever be the same. It will always depend on what you have with you, what your needs are, and what you can get from the environment. If you go into the backcountry in deep snow, it is definitely worth it to practice building snow trench shelters with the supplies you carry. The more you practice, the faster you will be, and the more ready you will be to improvise if need be.
Oh, and those mylar emergency blankets will never fold up again, so buy a few to practice with.
Watch Carley’s short videos on this subject:
How to Build a Snow Trench Shelter
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How to Build a Quinzhee
Carley Fairbrother is the creator and host of the YouTube channel, The Last Grownup in the Woods, geared at getting adults outside and connecting with nature.
After a seven year career as a backcountry park ranger, she returned to school to get her Bachelor of Education and dedicate her life to helping kids get outside.
She loves to travel, but is most at home in the forests and mountains of British Columbia, Canada.
She enjoys hiking, climbing, canoeing, building forts, and eating bugs.
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
- Carley Fairbrotherhttps://www.campingforwomen.com/author/carley-fairbrother/
A must-read for anyone interested in wilderness survival, this guide offers practical tips and detailed instructions that could be life-saving in an emergency.
Pretty cool! My kids would love this however not sure I would ever want to be in the situation to need it 🙂
Great useful post.
wow! this was so thorough and helpful!
Wow! You’re superwoman! This is amazing! I’ve never actually thought about learning these type of survival skills but they’re so important! I often venture off the beaten path on short day trips but to be honest it never dawned on me how ill prepared I am for unlikely disasters until reading this post and noting all of the tools you walk with. I’ll definitely be better about it now!
Excellent guide for snow trekkers!! that igloo pic with the light glowing inside looks ultra cozy!! Great tips and post!
This would be so useful for anyone planning to camp out on the snow. The step by step instructions thankfully leave no space for misinterpretation. I really enjoyed all of the photographs as well.
The step by step instructions are very helpful! Thanks for putting such valuable information together for survival if it comes to it.
WOW! What a fantastic idea – that igloo pic with the light glowing inside looks ultra cozy!! Great tips and post – Thanks so much for sharing!
Wow excellent guide for trekkers in snow covered regions. Those tools look mighty useful and life saving. Such a great way to show how to do this, step by step.
I don’t go out in the snow ever but this was very interesting and helpful if there is ever an emergency while driving in the snow and might need this
We don’t get snow this far south but this is very helpful info!
I have to confess, I have never been skiing! Partly because we lived in the southern hemisphere in an area where we never had snowfall. I’ve always wondered how people survived being trapped in the elements and this seems like a really good way to do that.
I think that’s a pretty good reason for never skiing. I hope you get a chance one day (and hopefully you won’t need to build a survival shelter).
My friend is about to go hiking in Canada and I sent her and her husband this! They especially appreciated your final thoughts on how to make it bigger for two 🙂 Thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us!
Thanks. I hope they find it helpful, but never have to build one (unless it’s for fun).
This is so cool! Being from a very warm climate, I have little to no experience with snow–the closest I’ve ever seen to anything like this was building a snow “fort” on a trip to Maine as a little kid. This is definitely important knowledge for hiking in snowy conditions, though–I can see how it could be life saving if something goes wrong!
Oh I am still dreaming about this, I first need to see snow in my life and the day I do that, I am sure I am gonna try this fun thing of building a trench as well. It seems like a thrilling experience to me, to build it and then stay a night in it. That igloo looks so so beautiful
This looks a lot of fun & possibly life saving in some circumstances! I live in Dubai so no chance of snow 🙁 & even when back home in England it never snows as much as this to make a trench although I would love it!
Great post, very informative!
Wow this is so cool, I never knew this can be made by any normal person. I live in LA, so there is no chance of having a snow fall. But am surely gonna share this with my friends who live in Canada
These are great tips for building a snow trench shelter. This might come in handy someday!
Well, I hope you never have to build one unless it’s for fun or practice.
We never get snow where I live in South Africa so this is such a strange concept 🙂 But it is still very cool!
Great blog post! Having read a couple of Jon Krakauer’s climbing books recently I had been wondering how they do this. I can picture it so much better now! Not sure if I’ll ever have to do this (I think I would get sooo claustrophobic!) but you never know.
I tried sleeping in one once to see how it felt. As soon as I turned out my light, I started hearing things outside. In a tent, I would be able to convince myself it was my imagination, but in the trench, I panicked. All I could think of was a cougar at my door and no way to escape. Luckily, I had a warm cabin 100 m away, so I slept there. Hopefully, I’ll never have to sleep in one.
This was so informative- I hope I never need to use this knowledge lol but I’m glad I have it just in case!
I hope I never need it neither.
This is a great step by step instructions on how to build a Snow Trench Shelter. I’ll share this to my friends who love camping and hiking.
Thanks! I hope they find it helpful!
An adult sophisticated house but, with use and a purpose! Where I live we don’t get a lot of snow but I grew up building little houses in the snow. I love this. It’s so useful and resourceful.
I really like practicing my shelter building. It’s a pretty good excuse to build a fort.
oh my gosh you are awesome. That looks so fun!
Practicing winter survival skills is pretty much the same as fort building 😀
I normally would say I do not have much call for this in the United Kingdom. However, this is the worst winter I can recall in over thirty years and I think I might have to take some notes! I have even taken to having skiwear in my car so some extra gear to make a snow shelter would not hurt
I have a few friends there. It was a great year for snow lovers, not so much for everyone else. A shovel in your car is pretty handy in winter. I’ve used mine to dig myself out of a snowbank a few times.
This is such a useful and informative post! Honestly I never thought of ever building a snow trench, but you just never know. 🙂
Hopefully, you’ll never need to, but it’s fun to practice.
Passing this on to my husband! He loves to do all the fun (but scary to me) winter activities and I always worry about him getting stranded!
This should be great for him. I saw that someone in the comments for the video said they’d had to use one a few times.
This is such a useful and informative post! Honestly I never thought of ever building a snow trench, but you just never know. I also learned something new about snow being an excellent insulator than people think. I’m still a big wimp in the snow and freezing temperatures, but I won’t forget this post anytime soon!
It’s such a fast and simple shelter to build. I hope you remember this but never actually have to use it.
My sister took lessons for such a thing and my dad nearly freaked out when he heard she was going to be sleeping under the snow! I find it fascinating!
Good for her. It’s a lot of fun to practice shelter building.
These instructions may come in handy for me someday, especially if I decided to travel to a mountainous area. Great post!
this is so cool.. love the step by step.. not sure if i will find myself in a situation where i will need a snow trench but definitely a good to know.
This might come in very handy one day thank you!