Surviving the Night in a Snow Cave

• Bring a complete change of clothes.  You'll need to change out of your wet clothing completely before going to sleep.  If you put your snow pants and coat under your sleeping bag they won't freeze and you can wear them again the next morning.
  
  
• Believe me, your cave is warmer than outside.  If you're cold, get inside and get changed to dry clothing and you'll feel 100% warmer!  I’ve been on camps where I’ve spent over an hour convincing a boys that they're going to freeze to death if they don’t get into the cave – but it didn’t make sense to them that if they climbed into a cave of ice, they would get warmer.  Once I finally got them to go inside and change out of their wet clothing, they warmed up almost immediately.
  
  
• Nalgene type water bottles can be filled with boiling water and stuffed into the bottom of your sleeping bag.  It will warm up your bag before you even get into it, and keep your feet warm all night.
  
  
• If you’re one of those who needs to go to the bathroom multiple times in the night, you have 3 options:
  
  
• Get out of your warm sleeping bag, put on your snow pants and coat and boots and slither out your snow cave to write your name out there, or
  
  
• Bring a “special” bottle to bed with you that you can open up and fill up with some nice warm fluids when you’ve got to go – just make sure the cap screws on tightly and it’s labeled properly, or
  
  
• Roll over in bed so you’re facing the cave wall, unzip your sleeping bag half way and sign your name on the inside of the cave – just make sure you don’t have the tarp wrapped around you at the time.

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