The Washburn times. [volume] (Washburn, Wis.) 1896-1976, 1908-07-30
COMFORTS OF A SNOW HOUSE
Snug and Warm and Impervious tt
HoWling Blizzard,

The experience of those who tent in
the arctic during the colder winter
months is to be summarized about as
/ follows:
When the tent has been pitched the
| temperature within it is some fifteen or
twenty degrees higher than outside, or
thirty degrees if it is fifty degrees in the
open; one is damp and warm from the
strenuous exercise Of the day, but soon
| becomes cold, and shlverS; one craWlS
into his sleeping bag and makes entries
in the diary clumsiy with ones mittens
on; the heat from ones body forms hoar
frost on everything in the tent, and con-
geals in the sleeping bag, so that it be-
comes stiff and heavy with ice during
the days travel when it freezes, and
soaking wet when one gets into it at
night and thaws it out; this in turn vets
ones clothing and the trousers and coat
freeze stiff as sole-leather when one
breaks camp in the morning; the twenty
four hours are a round of wretchedness,
and the ice-crusted tent and icy sleeping
bags become heavy load for the sled.
When one follows Eskimo methods
the conditions are markedly different.
On any treeless open (unleSs it be per-
haps during the first mont hof winter.
an area of compactly drifted snow is
easily found; the snow knives (of bone
or iron, according to circumstances are
brought out and the surface of the drift
is divided into blocks of domino shape,
say fourteen by thirty inches and four
inches thick: these are then placed on
edge and end to end in circle the size
of the desired ground area of the dome.
shaped hut; then, on the principles OF
architecture that apply to domes,
whether made of stone or snow, the bee
hive house is completed. Two men can in
an hour build house large enough tor
eight to sleep in. When the house is
completed a doorway is cut in its side
near the ground, skins are spread over
the floor. one brushes himself as clear
of snow as possible and crawls inside.
The oil lamps are then lit, and the house
is soon brought to a temperature consid-
erably above the freezing point; for
snow is one of the best known nOn-con-
ductors of heat, and the intense cold of
the outside penetrates the walls only to
a very slight degree. But when the
house gets warm the inner side OF the
snow begins to thaw, and the water
formed is sucked up into the snow blot
ter fashion; when this water penetrates
far enough into the snow to meet the
cold from the outside it freezes, and
your snow house is turned into an ice
dome so strong that a polar bear can
crawl over it without danger of breaking
through.
When once inside the house the Eski-
mos strip naked to the waist and hang
lIlClA ClotHCo W I'LL Oli pCSo III IhO No4i'
On some journeys we had sheet iron
stoves procured from whalers in former
years. which we installed in the snow
houses. and in which we built roaring
fires.
One is well placed to take comfort in
the ingenuity of man overcoming harsh
environment when. sitting snug, warm,
and lightly clad, one listens to an arctic
blizzard whining helplessly over the ice
vault that two hours before was an oval
snow-bank. I longed for a dressing gown
and slippers, but one cannot burden his
sled with such luxuries. There was no
cold to make the hands numb in writing
the diary, no frost to CONCEAL on the bed
clothing and make them wet, none of
the nights discomforts and the morrow's
forebodings, that have been the stock in
trade of the makers Of arctic books.
And when we broke camp in the morn
ing we did not burden the sled with an
ice-stiffened. UNDERGROUND tent, but
stuck in our belt the ten-ounce snow
knife, our potential roof for the coming
mighty. Stefansson, in Harpers
Magazine.