Saturday, April 05, 2008

 

Pit Digging in the Snow

Ever since coming back from the summer of New Zealand and Australia I haven't posted anything, but a lot has happened. Especially things to do with snow. I've dug holes in the snow, I've built snowmen with church kids, and I've gone snowboarding on Mt. Hakkoda. On this post I will talk about digging holes in the snow.
On the beginning of March, I decided to dig a deep square pit at the end of the church parking lot where we get our snow pushed aside. Since all of the snow that snows down on our parking lot gets pushed there, there ends up being a big pile of snow. It took 3 days for me to dig the hole that you see in the picture above. I managed to dig about 2 meters before I hit the parking lot cement. It was a lot of work lifting the snow up above over my head with a shovel. It sure helped me build my arm muscles. Since it was so deep I made a couple foot holes at different heights in one corner of the square where I could place my feet in and climb out. The finished hole turned out pretty cool.

I've actually dug a pit like this two years ago before I even started this blog. I probably would have done this last year too, but there wasn't enough snow so I couldn't. Instead I built a small igloo with the church boys. Here is a picture of the igloo. My friend, John wrote about the pit I dug two years ago on his blog. If you want to read about it check out flat3D.

I was even able to lie down in it with my legs stretched.
Not that I would want to spend a night in there, though.


When I showed the square pit to some kids from church on a Sunday, they wanted to contribute to my project in some way, so I suggested them to dig two more holes and connect them by digging a tunnel between them. So together with about 5 people we took turns digging a triangle hole and a circular hole. We didn't quite finish the circular hole before everyone had to go home, but we managed to finish the triangle hole and connect the square one with it by digging a tunnel between them. Everyone was willing to dig and lift snow so that helped us make progress. I thought making different shaped holes would be interesting.

This was where we dug. The first square pit that I dug is on the left and the triangle one is on the right next to my black gloves. You can't see the circular one in this picture, but it is where the middle shovel is.By the next Sunday, the snow had melted quite a bit. Within a couple weeks the tunnel melted to this condition in the picture above. You can see that the roof of the tunnel could break anytime.

This is a picture from the triangle hole looking through the melting tunnel towards the square hole. Since I didn't start digging until March, the whole thing melted quite quickly. Even though this pit/tunnel digging project didn't last for long, it was nice to make worth of all the snow we had and have fun with it. At least I have pictures to show that the church kids and I dug a cool tunnel.


# posted by Aaron @ 5:20 PM
Comments:
That square pit is AWESOME!
# posted by Blogger Unknown : 11:33 AM
 
Thanks David.
# posted by Blogger Aaron : 10:51 PM
 
wow so much snow!! good on u guys for digging tunnels/pits - they look pretty impressive :)

has it started warming up there much? summer has still pretty much been continuing here...we had the warmest March in several years and its been a pretty warm April so far :)
# posted by Blogger Priscilla : 12:57 PM
 
Hey Priscilla,
It has warmed up here really fast. The snow melted real quick. Right now the cherry blossoms are already blooming. Somedays it feels like the middle of summer.
# posted by Blogger Aaron : 10:44 AM
 
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