Tag: outdoors

How To Attach an Ice Axe to Your Pack

Ice Axe attached to an Ospey PackWhen you bought your pack, it may have had a loop (or two!) on the bottom to hold your ice axe(s), but… how do you attach the axe to your pack?

I never knew how myself, but on a recent snowshoeing and backpacking trip, George showed my how and the solution rocks!

First, drop the ice axe down through the loop, so the head is above the loop and the shaft is through and below the loop with the pick side facing the middle of the pack.

Now fold it up and secure it to your pack using whatever the manufacturer put in line with the folded up shaft. Continue reading “How To Attach an Ice Axe to Your Pack”

Building a Snow Cave

Building a Snow Cave
The view from inside our snow cave

So you wanna build a Snow Cave? Thankfully it’s a lot easier than I thought – easy as in not complicated, that is. Building a snow cave takes a lot of hard physical labor, but is well worth it in the end as you have a comfy, flat, dry, above freezing home for the night.

This weekend, George, Greg and I ventured off to into the great outdoors for two days of snowshoeing and winter backpacking with some big ideas of how we could spend the night.

On Friday afternoon, I had read about the IceBox which unfortunately is only available online from REI and occasionally at their flagship store in Seattle. The IceBox is a brilliant invention which allows for the creation of perfect igloos, even with less than ideal snow. As I would not be able to acquire this in time for our trip, we had to make do with building a snow cave, and hauling in a 3 person tent and tarps in case that didn’t work out.

So where do you learn how to build a snow cave? Continue reading “Building a Snow Cave”