I’ve always felt a minor tinge of frustration reflecting on the luxuries of my Nepalese expedition. From retiring to readily-prepared 4-season tents immediately after hiking, to free-flowing warm tea in the mornings and sleeping in the cozy embrace of two (or twelve) other warm bodies. Granted, I was tired and these comforts provided some much-needed respite for both body and soul. Yet, I was left with a lingering doubt: perhaps I could not survive a winter trip alone. Being on exchange, where I would have to rely entirely on myself, forced me to face this question.
Our club’s flagship Technical Mountaineering Course (TMC) hadn’t equipped me with essential outdoor survival skills like pitching a tent in snow or starting a fire. But it did give me something far more valuable: the belief that everything was in reach, and I just had to take the first step to make it real.
The following is a collection of stories from my time spent camping outdoors during my semester exchange in The University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. It’s by no means an exhaustive list (notably missing a proper bivouac / snow trench) but hopefully it inspires other Singaporeans to embrace the serenity of camping in the snow.
Snow Cave
In my first month of my exchange semester, I had the chance to follow the university’s outdoor club to sleep in a snow cave.
It was a new experience for all of us–no one, not even the trip leader, had built one before. Despite our collective lack of experience, we made our way to the local ski mountain, Mount Seymour, filled with stoke. From there, we took a backcountry snowshoeing trail to Pump Peak, and began building our caves at its base.
I expected to just shovel snow out like powder, but I quickly realised that we were working with a consolidated snowpack that had hardened after many days of continuous pressure. It was so solid that trying to lever it out with my shovel would have broken it. Instead, I had to painstakingly cut “snow bricks” with my shovel and roll them out of the cave onto the snowshoers below. The tedious work went on for two hours, but in a way, the aching of my muscles in breaking the snowpack was very reassuring in quelling the intrusive thought that the roof would cave in and entomb me in a coffin of my own creation.
With my hole reaching a satisfactory standard (I got lazy), a few of us decided to enjoy the sunset atop Pump Peak, offering a beautiful sunset overlooking all of Vancouver. We then glissaded down and shared in a communal feast of pasta, instant noodles, eggs, beer and apple pie among others, before retiring to our caves.
How did I sleep? It was, obviously, still very cold, but with the temperature outside being –6°C, surviving the night already felt like a win. The cave was surprisingly good at trapping heat and blocking out the cold winds, but I did not flatten out the ceiling, so little nubs of snow kept melting off the ceiling and dripping onto my sleeping bag–very noticeable, and very unpleasant. My sleeping bag was also unzippable at the time, making it especially cold (I learnt to repair zips immediately after this trip).. My feet suffered the most–they were persistently cold to the point of pain, but fortunately not to the point of frostbite. All in all, the discomfort from the cold made for a very long night of tossing and turning (into the cold snow wall, unfortunately).
After what felt like forever, I woke up to the relative morning warmth, where I painstakingly slithered out of my snow hole and spent ten minutes struggling to wear my completely frozen boots. They’d been soaked through the day before, after an ill-advised glissade I did for absolutely no reason, which left my boots packed full of snow. Eventually, I crawled out to witness a morning sunrise which was not as warm as expected. Still, the warmth of others (and their freshly boiled tea) was enough to melt my frozen heart and feet as I watched the sun light the mountains ablaze on the hill atop my abode, putting my hands in my boots to try to melt it. A night completed in a cave of pure snow–a memory that I’ll always cherish but an experience hopefully I will never repeat.
MIR in Yosemite
I joined my TMC batchmates Giri and Yugan (who were also on exchange in North America) in San Francisco before we set off on the 6 hour drive to Yosemite. We were awestruck by the formations of Yosemite Falls and El Capitan (cue the “can’t believe someone free solo’ed this”) and we ran to try to catch a glimpse of Firefall (it was misted out), and as it got dark we had to settle down and make camp in Camp 4. Sleeping amongst such majesty, mere minutes of hiking away from the world’s most famous boulder, Midnight Lightning, and the imposing walls of Yosemite, we understood how climbers from all over the world would be simply enchanted by the rock, and for it to define a culture of climbing in North America. We then proceeded to not climb any of it despite bringing ropes and draws over 2000 miles to get here.
The next day, we bade a solemn farewell to heated toilets, showers and fireplaces and set off into the wilderness, headed towards our destination for the night– Yosemite Falls. On our way there, It was simply impossible to get lost as we were following the thundering of America’s tallest waterfall. It was incredible to think that the deafening roar of the waterfall was probably at its weakest in the year. Since it was February, the snow that accumulated at the top (and from the Upper Sierra Nevada) hadn’t melted yet – in summer, the flow would be far more powerful.
After passing through the rainbow at the plunge of the waterfall, we found a large offwidth in the wall where we set up our lunch camp and cooked up some turkey sausage and beans fried rice, to the envy of all the day-hikers that turned back at that point. After lunch, we climbed the 800m of switchbacks alongside the waterfall to reach the top – where the waterfall turned into a river and untracked snow stretched out before us. We passed by the last of the hikers going home, a girl that saw our backpacking gear and asked “are you f**king CRAZY?”.
We found a site beside a rock that blocked the current wind direction, and we all walked over it repeatedly to form a compacted snow platform. While Yugan and Giri set up the tent, I set up the kitchen several metres away (not too far – I assessed that there were probably no bears this high up. Probably.). I built it by packing snow walls around it so the wind wouldn’t snuff out the flame of my $10 stove, and I prepared some hot snow tea and delicious freeze-dried meals to enjoy as the sun set. Laughing among ourselves and eating good food (half a dahl baht pack, because Yugan spilled the rest in the tent) while the wind whipped around us and a river raged just 30m away was one of the best memories of this exchange. Three bodies in a tent make for a warm, comfortable night of sleep.
So comfortable, in fact, that everyone chose to sleep in. I decided to take a morning wander around the top of Yosemite, gazing ahead at Cathedral Rock, and back at the upper portion of El Capitan. It was a rare moment of serenity in the world’s most famous National Park – to be utterly alone in one of the most beautiful places on earth. I prepared snow coffee as the sleepyheads woke up, then we promptly rushed down to hike up to our next destination for the night.
One pointless trip to the welcome centre, two very long showers (to my chagrin), and a horrible bean fried rice cooked in the carpark later, we finally set off for our campsite of the night, Little Yosemite Valley. Friendly hikers told us that the supposedly closed Mist Trail was open, saving us an hour of travel and treating us to one of the most picturesque spots in Yosemite, Vernal Falls.
We continued following the river, getting sprayed by the titular Mist, and before long, it got dark (I told you the showers were too long). Luckily, we were in probably the most well-maintained trials in all of America, and the moon was bright, so even without a headlamp, I was happily trodding along with just the stars and the thundering of Nevada Falls to guide me. A truly heavenly experience.
After an eternity of trudging through knee deep snow, we almost walked right into a wooden post that was faintly scratched with LITTLE YOSEMITE VALLEY, our campsite for the night. Again, we were all alone, so we gathered all the logs we could, gathered in a campfire spot and cooked up a feast complete with three freeze dried meals, two tom yum cup noodles and a freeze dried peach cobbler, with plenty of snow tea . Our hands were constantly freezing but the second we sipped our hot cups of tea it felt like our very souls were warmed. It was even colder tonight (even though the wind cover was better), but with three bodies and a well flattened tentground, the sleep was still extremely cozy (except for my damned toes again for whatever reason)
The drill of woodpeckers woke me up early and I decided to gather fresh snow to boil water for the trip down. Giri and Yugan woke up after I boiled three liters worth (a LONG time), and they started to slowly pack up the tent. We were moving fast because Giri’s flight was close to midnight and a six hour drive awaited us, but while Giri and I were sitting inside the tent stuffing our sleeping bags, we saw Yugan lying on the snow outside. We’ve seen this many times before as he sinks in the snow and yells out YOSEMITEEE–but this time, no YOSEMITEEE came from his mouth. We crawled outside to check on him and it turns out he just passed out randomly (to this day, we still have no idea why). We decided to sit down for another hour or so and I just gathered more snow to make yet another batch of snow tea to let our friend recover.
For the first time in the trip, we took an intentional breather, sitting in a snowy abandoned campsite on top of Yosemite after a friend’s fainting spell brought our trip to an unexpected (and slightly comical) halt. There was a strange blend of absurdity and serenity in this moment that formed the fondest memory of this whole trip. We took our time to go down, including me taking a freezing cold shower at the top of the Merced river (after a full day of racially charged harassment about me missing yesterday’s shower), Giri trying to imitate bird calls and sticking our faces into the snow.
Within an hour of reaching the visitor centre, we had an overpriced lunch, bought as many postcards as we could, and finally got back into our car to hightail it back to San Francisco airport. Now we were confronted with the most dangerous part of the trip yet: Yugan crossing four lanes in two seconds to get to a highway exit.
Thanks to Yugan and Giri for braving long flights and missing exams to come to Yosemite with me, and carrying the heavy loads because I hurt my knee handcarrying all my gear through Berkeley. And thanks for the many laughs, there was scarcely a moment that wasn’t filled with laughter. And thank you to Giri for not letting Yugan and I drive most of the time, that was a lifesaver.
The Loathsome Seymour Ski Bum
One fine Wednesday in the middle of March, I was suffering through a quiz I did not study for and in the middle of it I was thinking about a 2009 youtube documentary my local roommate showed me, about Charlie Ager, the notorious Whistler Ski Bum who lived in a tent, scrounged vending machines for coins and snuck onto ski lifts – all in the name of shredding the gnar, hounding fresh pow and hitting sweet lines (translation: skiing. A lot.). What a sheer expression of freedom and passion. “I could do that too” passed through my empty head. I spent the rest of the quiz duration running over all the tips I learnt from the last few camping trips, and the avalanche knowledge I picked up here and there, and when I reached home I packed my belongings, slept early and left wordlessly in the morning, telling just one friend as an emergency contact.
I headed to Pump Peak, behind the Mt Seymour Ski Resort where I had previously spent the night in a snow cave. This time, I was intent on going beyond the first summit to maybe the third or fourth, since I now had a tent I could set up in minutes. On my way up, I never truly felt alone–chatting with the bus driver, an elderly Chinese couple and a likely homeless man during my lunch break atop the first peak. Beyond the first peak, however, there was absolutely nobody else around and I mostly had to break my own tracks. I reached the second peak without much trouble, but as I searched for the route to the third, I realised it was an extremely leeward route, meaning I would be walking under enormous cornices for close to a kilometer. Furthermore, I kept sliding down in car sized chunks of snow as I walked, which continued pinwheeling down creating small trails of snowballs. This told me enough; spring conditions had set in and avalanche risk was high. Unlike crevasse techniques where you could theoretically crawl out of the hole yourself after your friend catches you, avalanche rescue involves hoping your friend is unburied and good enough at playing Marco Polo with his beacon to dig your body out within 4 minutes. I decided that maybe today was not the best time to gamble with my youtube avalanche knowledge, and gingerly used my shovel as an ice axe to step out of the small avalanche I created.
I decided to camp near the second peak. I found a spot that was likely avalanche free: only a 10-20 degree incline with a couloir nearby that would channel any avalanches away, and trees uphill that offered an extra layer of safety. I shoveled and stepped everywhere to flatten out the ground, then lay out my tent facing the east – for a view of sunrise from the comfort of my sleeping bag. Sticking tent pegs into snow softened by the afternoon sun was an exercise in patience–and ultimately in futility–so I settled for putting in four, (after one slipped away into the abyss below).
I scrambled up to the second peak to enjoy the beautiful Vancouver sunset, with a whole pot of snow hot chocolate in hand. Despite the sun going down, a lady actually emerged at the summit – a quick post-work peakbagging effort I guess. I offered her some of my hot chocolate and she traded me some masala tea bags.We then sat down and talked about life and the beauty of the outdoors until the sun went down and the stars came out. I wished her a safe journey home as I took my chicken curry packet into my tent, and the chicken curry promptly made its way all over my sleeping mat. I mourned that I could no longer make fun of Yugan for such a blunder. I fully loosened my boots outside, wore two layers of dry wool socks, kept my shovel close by and wrapped my headlamp around my head. Cocooned in this small ritual of comfort, I nodded off into the best twelve hours of sleep I had the entire year.
I awoke to a complete whiteout and messages from friends asking if I was coming for skiing later. I told them I’ll be down in an hour, so I packed up my tent (losing yet another tent peg, dammit) and stumbled off into the mist. Thankfully, my tracks from the previous day’s hike up were still there, making it easy to find my way back down (with the occasional orange trail marker popping up for added reassurance). After half an hour of speedy scrambling and fun glissading, I got to hear the familiar whirring of ski lifts, a sure sign that I was nearly back at the resort. It was time to fulfil the “ski” part of being a ski bum, and I spent the next 10 consecutive hours skiing along the same hills I had climbed the day before. My friends only realised I slept there overnight when I brought the huge backpack on the bus back home.
Later that night my roommate told me about an exchange he had with his dad who drove him back to the house:
“Son, I think there’s a homeless man trying to get into your house.”
“Ayo Dad that’s just my roommate James”
Epilogue
During my time on exchange, I didn’t do anything extreme or groundbreaking (no 16-hour summit push, no sleeping in sub -10 degree conditions). All I did was build up experience slowly, under conditions that were within my means, and have lots of fun.
I’m hoping to read one day about greater endeavors requiring more extreme forms of sleeping, from portaledges on big walls to snow trenches on long ski tours. But in the meantime, I hope that these stories inspire Singaporeans to enjoy camping regardless of season, and to experience the joy that going against the current can bring.
James (MIR 22), Jan – Apr 2025
Appendix A: General Snow Camping Tips
Without reading the rest of the guide or the subsection tips below, these are the most important tips:
- The best warmth equipment is another human being next to you
- Below 0 you need your sleeping mat + sleeping bag + sleeping shelter, missing anything will make your night very cold.
- Always sleep with headlamp handy / around your neck
- Keep things you need thawed / unfrozen in your sleeping bag i.e. water bottle, socks
Sleeping Bag
- Learn the rating for your sleeping bag and whether it is down / synthetic
- Down sleeping bags are lighter, more compactable and warmer per gram than synthetic ones, but are more ineffective when wet. The space saved with a Down sleeping bag likely opens your bag to more heat options though.
- Learn to repair zips. A lot of heat is lost when the zips are broken
Sleeping Mat / Inflatable Pad
- Did you know your sleeping mat has a rating too? Learn them
- Everyone usually hangs their sleeping mat below their bag, it’s also useful to deploy as a seat during rests and meals when the ground is just snow
- For sub-alpine, or 2D1N affairs consider using an inflatable mattress instead because that will save significant amounts of space compared to foldables
- Pros:
- Lighter
- Less space
- Arguably more comfortable
- Cons:
- Takes some time and effort to inflate (~5 min, not that bad)
- RISKY – can and will eventually fail in which case it becomes useless without a patchy repair – bringing duct tape is a generally good hiking tip
- Pros:
Keeping your feet warm
- From all the people I’ve spoken to, the feet are always the coldest part of their body and the main source of discomfort preventing sleep
- Filling a Nalgene with boiling water and putting it at your feet works for a while, but it gets cold anyway in 3-4 hours so you might wake up again.
- Maybe even more Nalgenes will work
- Merino Wool is worth its weight in gold for hiking:
- Very low blister chance
- Doesn’t stink even if it’s sweat-soaked in your sleeping bag
- Very warm
- IMPORTANT NOTE: The Decathlon “merino wool” socks are not what I would consider merino wool socks. They are competent hiking socks but they stink and do not preserve that much warmth. I got deals at MEC and REI to get Darn Tough and SmartWool socks and they were much better
- I recommend always using 3 pairs of socks
- 1 merino wool – “wet”, for hiking. When sleeping, leave it in/near your sleeping bag so it doesn’t freeze
- 1 merino wool + 1 anything – dry, for sleeping
- Emergency replacement in case your hiking socks are drenched and there’s lots of hiking left – prevents blistering
- Two layers when sleeping is extra warm
- You can keep handwarmers between the layers
- Ensure that your entire sleeping bag is on the sleeping mat
- Sometimes the last part of the sleeping bag is on the floor instead of the mat which can sap heat from your feet area very fast
- At the same time don’t flush your feet to the wall of the sleeping bag because that also saps heat
- Also don’t touch the edges of the tent
Miscellaneous
- Keep your boots fully loosened prior to sleeping. Often the shoelaces get frozen overnight and it’s impossible to melt the boot unless you wear it so keep it pre-opened
- Keeping a pee bottle handy is useful, I find the 80 cents Cha Pai from Sheng Shiong is the perfect mix of volume and opening size
- Using your down jacket as a pillow is useful to put on when leaving for a proper pee break / chase off bears
- Cooking snow for water takes a while because you need to melt a pot of snow into ~¼ its volume of water, then boil it, meaning you need 4 scoops to get a full pot of water
- Cooking snow also speeds up if you add a bit of water at the bottom first as a contact surface
- Wind affects stove intensity a LOT so block it as much as you can, can bring a foldable stove cover too
- Building cold tolerance
- Cold tolerance I feel is more neurological than anything so I think you make gains through limited exposure to extremes rather than gradual exposure (which makes it always feel “normal”)
- Meaning, I felt my cold tolerance improves from my many polar dips rather than turning down the heating in my house.
- One trick I use for cold conditions is to force my breathing to become “normal” where your breathing has the tendency to become tense and irregular, you have to force a regular rhythm and trick your brain into a sense of normalcy
Appendix B: Snow Cave Technical Breakdown
Snow caves are quite fun for the experience, and fulfilling that suppressed urge for the mines. But it is quite a legitimate option for ski touring, where you carry a shovel as part of your avalanche kit (shovel, probe, beacon) anyway so using that shovel for a shelter in place of a tent saves ~2kg. The build up and tear down time for a proper snow cave like I built or even a quinzee (think an igloo held up by your hiking poles) typically would only make sense if you are spending multiple days in the area.
Apply normal avalanche safety principles to your shelter location (i.e. avoid terrain traps like couloirs right above it, don’t apply it to a fragile snow layer i.e. pinwheeling even in the morning, etc. Snow shelters should always be clearly marked above it (i.e. with snowshoes) so your friends don’t cave you in while you sleep, and properly torn down because skiers will probably destroy their knees if they fall into your cave. Also unless you’ve ventilated your cave, resist the temptation to cook inside the warmth of the cave because carbon monoxide poisoning is subtle. Legend has it that “hotboxing” quinzees are an excellent bonding activity but if you know you know. ALWAYS KEEP YOUR SHOVEL AT ARMS REACH.
The snow cave took about 2-3 hours of somewhat fatiguing work to build, and another 1.5h to tear down. To find spots: we shared a ski touring probe (a really long collapsible stick, part of an avalanche safety kit) to scope out potential snow cave locations that were at approximately a 30 degree incline, and had ~4-5m of uninterrupted snow depth to it.
The scientific principles of a good snow cave are ultimately convection – hot air rises and cold air falls – and thermodynamics – fluids (i.e. wind) quickly passing over you will sap your heat very fast. Therefore your shelter should follow the diagram below such that
- Your bed is elevated
- Your bed area is fully shielded from wind
- Your ceiling is flat and free of little “nubs” that could melt individually
- You can also have an even deeper trough just after the entrance for an extra cold air pit
- Cut the dimensions slightly wider/taller so you have space to bend down to reach your zip
I would have built my bed especially high and my trough especially low and added a tarp to the entrance, because the wind tickling my feet was not pleasant. I would also have taken an extra 5 minutes to smoothen out the top with my shovel to prevent droplets from melting off onto my face. I also would have improved my equipment: I would have brought 2 dedicated sleeping pairs of merino wool socks instead of just 1, and put a heat pack between the 2 layers.
But in general I think the snow trench / coffin has much better returns on warm per time spent to develop the shelter IF you can expect non-inclement weather. Fresh snow falling on you is especially cold.
Appendix C: Statistics
Sleeping Bag: Synthetic Mammut Ajungilak Kompakt Winter from the MIR Store
Sleeping Mat: Foldable Sleeping Mat from the MIR Store
Tent: Naturehike Mongar 2
Socks: Darn Tough Socks + Smartwool Socks
Base Layers: Uniqlo Ultra Warm
Stove: BRS 3000T ($10 on shopee)
Pot: Naturehike Pot (on shopee)
| Equipment | Date / Season | Temperature / Conditions | How I felt |
| Solo Snow Cave- Sleeping Mat- Broken Sleeping Bag | Early Jan Full Winter | -6 Snowy mountain at ~1200m | Really cold and uncomfortable. Woke up often. Feet were freezing |
| 3 Pax, Big Tent- Sleeping Mat- Sleeping Bag | Early Feb Full Winter | ~5 Snowy mountain at ~1000m. Howling winds | Very warm and pleasant in general except for my feet. |
| The Stars- Sleeping Mat- Sleeping Bag | Mid Feb Californian Winter. | ~10 Forested Campsite | Beautiful to fall asleep under the stars. Ran into the tent when it started raining |
| Solo Tent- Sleeping Mat- Sleeping Bag | Mid March Late winter, woke up to a whiteout | ~0 Snowy mountain at ~1500m. | Feet felt cold for the first 4 hours then I slept like a baby for 8 hours |
| Tent- Sleeping Mat- Emergency Blanket | Mid April Early Spring | ~8 Glacial Lake | It’s pretty much as warm as you are, so the deeper you fall asleep the colder you get then you wake up again |
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