That is a great question! Usually, we leave the snow in a pile next to the pit, and then use the pile of snow to fill in the pit after we are all done working. (It’s always a good idea to stomp on the snow you fill the pit in with to get it nice and compacted, and then mark the filled-in pit with flags so that no once accidently walks or drives a snowmobile there.) We also use a saw to get nice, square snow bricks out of the pit and use these bricks to make wind blocks around where we work.

This year though, for one of our pits, we were working close to the “bamboo forest” at camp, which is a bunch of bamboo poles standing up in the snow that are used to measure how much snow falls. (When it snows, it buries more of the pole, and the staff up at camp measure how much of the pole has been buried.) Because we were close to the forest, we had to move all of the snow back to camp where it wouldn’t be blown by the wind, messing up the snowfall measurements. Luckily, we were able to use an electric snowmobile to pull sled load after sled load of snow back into camp. To fill the pit up when we were done, we had to bring snow back in from camp again with the snowmobile. If it weren’t for the electric snowmobile, we would have had to pull all the snow back on sleds by foot. And it would have taken forever.

During summer camp this year we watched a few of the Ice Stories videos and talked about what it might be like to be a scientist on the poles. The campers had a lot of fun watching your videos about how much enjoy studying snow.
After watching the ’snow freaks’ video, summer camper, Fawn had a question for you:
What do you do with the snow after you have shoveled it out?