One person's cold nightmare is another's frozen paradise.
Rochester native Kevin Demsky loves snow. The more white powder on the ground the better., which makes this the best winter ever.
Four years ago, after his eight-year-old daughter Anna asked to go camping in their backyard on a February night, he decided to build an igloo.
One year later, he wanted to build a bigger, better one, but a mild winter meant no snow. Demsky didn't have a snow problem this year. In his backyard, there was more than enough snow to build an 11-foot wide, 10-foot high igloo with a seven-foot internal ceiling.
The igloo was built over five nights and finished on Feb. 27. Kevin's wife, Kimberly, 13-year-old son, Jacob, and Anna, now 12, helped him build the outdoor snow structure in frigid nighttime conditions in the backyard of their home at 2439 Ashland Drive N.W.
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"We built it on school nights in the dark with 40-mph winds during the polar vortex, so we were out here with minus-30, minus-40 windchill," Kevin said.
Since the igloo was finished, Kevin, Anna and Jacob have camped overnight inside doubled-up sleeping bags on a two-foot slab of ice inside the structure. Kevin said Anna would sleep every night inside the igloo, which he said is very safe.
"It was made entirely out of powder without water, just by packing the mountaineering jig with powder and packing it and releasing it carefully. I believe it to be safer than our homes in a 100 mph wind due to 8-foot solid compressed snow walls in an aerodynamic configuration vs. flat hollow stick walls," Kevin said. "It's eerily quiet inside, and always just below freezing, even when it's below 20 outside. All that is needed is a 20 degree sleeping bag and some separation from the ground or raised ice beds, and it's very comfortable."
Playing in the snow has been a lifelong passion for Kevin, who in 1978 at age 11 built a 13-foot tunnel underneath a boulevard. After building a few igloos for recreational fun, Kevin, an electrical engineer, would like to teach himself to build a 7-foot igloo in just a few hours as a survival skill.
"I want to see how fast I can build one. If you're stuck up at the Boundary Waters in the winter, you won't have 15 hours to build one," Kevin said.
This weekend, Kimberly will camp inside the igloo and the next night a couple from Minneapolis will try it out. After that the weather will determine the lifespan of the icehouse. Kevin said a few rainy days with 30-degree temperatures will flatten the igloo.
"Rain just destroys snow. It's like a snow cone. When you put the syrup on the snow cone, it gets slushy instead of solid."
Even if rain takes down the igloo, Kevin and his family will be back outside when the snow returns next winter.
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"I love snow," Kevin said. "I prefer my roads snow covered. Norwegians I know in Norway call it 10 months of winter with two months of 'bad skiing.'"
