This was my second time building an igloo and my third time sleeping in one. But first here is a little background.  When I first moved to CO I did a lot of research on any hike and backpacking trip I could get my hands on.  One of my favorite and most useful sites has become Around Colorado.  The site hasn’t seen much action since 2006 but is still a great resource for trip ideas.  There I found out about igloo camping and Igloo Ed the inventor of the IceBox.

Igloo Ed

I decided this is something I just have to try.  Then one great morning of shooting sunrise at Dream Lake I run into Ed on the trail.  After about a 45 minute chat on the side of the trail we agreed to plan an igloo camping trip together.  I mean who ever gets a private lesson on the equipment from the inventor himself???

Fast forward a few months and few igloo trips later and we’re back to January 2010.  It’s a new year and it’s time to start it off right.  So we head out to build and stay one night in an igloo.

We get to the Bear Lake trail head parking lot before 8 am after getting our back country camping permits at the RMNP entrance station. We meet another person, Rob who will hike in with us and help with the building but will not be staying over night.   We strap on our snowshoes and backpacks and head down the trail towards Dream Lake.  However we are only on the trail for a few hundred yards before we turn off at the big boulder and head down one of Ed’s back country trails.  This is one of my favorite things about hiking with Ed.  There is nobody else out there who knows the park as well as Ed.  OK, maybe I can think of one other person but him and Ed are friends anyway so it doesn’t count .  Even though the forecast for Estes Park called for partly sunny skies, we were surrounded by clouds and it snowed on and off the entire trip.  The trail to our designated igloo location is not very long, just over 2 miles but has a few steep and challenging parts, especially when you consider trekking through a few feet of snow with a heavy pack on.

We reach the frozen Lake Haiyaha around noon.  The lake itself is a really amazing place as the lake is slowly draining water out of it throughout the year making the water level drop in winter months as the thick layer of ice cracks around some of the rocks and boulders that usually hide below the water surface.  We step onto the ice and proceed to cross the lake to get to our igloo site just on the other side that is protected by freshly snowed over pine trees.

View from our igloo site

After a quick snack we begin building our igloo.  Having 4 people working together we get the platform done relatively fast and we start on building the walls of the igloo using Ed’s IceBox tool.  Each block is built by filling a plastic form with snow.  Now this is where most people have trouble and believe only a specific snow will work best.  Ed taught us before how to find the best snow and how to mix it with the heavier stuff to maximize our efforts.  This being our second time building we move a lot faster and have the complete igloo ready in about 7 hours.  I’m not saying it wasn’t an effort, quite the contrary.  It’s still a lot of hard work but once you sit inside with a stove going you get the feeling of amazing accomplishment.  And contrary to general belief, the igloo is a very comfortable and warm shelter.  There is no material flapping loudly in the wind, and the temperature stays a few degrees above freezing.  Therefore you never have to worry about your drinking water freezing.  We were actually able to dry our soaked jackets and boots inside.  My trick was sticking two sets of hand warmers inside my boots overnight.  It’s really the perfect shelter that usually lasts through the season.  I can’t wait to get back to it in a few weeks and really enjoy the area.

Igloo the next morning

Since most of the trip the weather didn’t cooperate I wasn’t able to capture any great landscape images but I did spend some time on the ice having fun with some abstract images of ice.  I could honestly spend all day with this subject.  I guess it’s good then that Matt and Ed dragged me away before I got frostbite or fell through the ice.  We actually heard ice cracking as I was packing away my camera gear.  It put a little fire under my butt and made me get off the ice faster .

Ice abstract

And here is another shot of the ice:

Ice Abstract 2