IGLOOING: Ignickers Jaunt To A Winter Hideaway

Written By: Reilly Capps

Every Wednesday in the summer after work, a bunch of guys from town used to hike up a local peak. Ballard was a favorite since you can get up and down it in three or four hours. Guys like Joe Powell would pack up their dinner, eat it on the top of the mountain, and then hike down using headlamps.

Only one thing threw a monkey wrench in their Wednesday jaunts: winter. Ballard is a tough hike in snowshoes, and it's real cold on the summit while you eat your sandwich. So Powell and some of his friends came up with a solution: build a warm igloo where they could have dinner once a week.

In 1994, they built the first one off Lizard Head Pass about 20 minutes by snowshoe from the road. It's been going ever since, soon nicknamed Igloo Jaunts and the people who hike in nicknamed ignickers (a contraction of igloo--picnickers).

Anyone is welcome, as long as you show up with a potluck dish that everyone can share.

"It's kind of a tree house club but with an open membership," says Chris Myers, an avid ignicker. "It's a great way of enjoying the wilderness in the winter. Instead of crowding around the TV, we head out to the igloo and have dinner together."

And this is no ordinary little igloo. The Ignickers build theirs 15 feet in diameter, with six-foot high ceilings. They try to build their igloo before the ski season starts since it's sometimes hard to lure people away from the chairlifts once they start running. But once it's built, it stays built all winter long, until April, the cruelest month, starts to melt the igloo and the ignickers have to find other things to do.