Snow fort

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A snow fort made from piled snowballs

A snow fort is a usually open topped temporary structure made of snow walls that is used for recreational purposes. They are generally built by children as a playground game or winter pastime, and are used as defensive structures in snowball fights, but also built and used for make-pretend games such as "house" or "store".

Along with the snowman, it is one of two structures commonly built by children out of snow.

Snow structures made for sleeping are called igloos when made from snow blocks or quinzhees when made by hollowing out a pile of snow.

[edit] Variations

Snow forts consist of walls of piled and compacted snow. They may be "open" or "closed", that is, a person in the snow fort may be completely surrounded by the walls on all sides, there may be a "door", or the person may be completely exposed except in one direction. The last variation is used for snowball fights where opponents have forts facing each other and attack exclusively from their own fort. Existing structures such as the walls or concave corners of a building can be used as part of the snow fort, allowing for faster and easier construction of a snow fort. A snow fort can also be a tunneled out burrow built in a large snow drift.

Snow forts are usually at least knee-height and one-roomed with ones built for snow fights higher, but ones built for "house" may have even lower walls and multiple rooms. When used for snowball fights, snow forts often have sections where the wall is lower through which its occupants throw snowballs.