Snow fort

A snow fort or snow castle is a usually open-topped temporary structure made of snow walls that is usually used for recreational purposes. Snow forts are generally built by children as a playground game or winter pastime and are used as defensive structures in snowball fights. They are also built and used for make-believe games such as "house", "store", or "community", a game where multiple forts are built in a group. Along with the snowman, it is one of the two structures commonly built by children out of snow.

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

A snow fort consists 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 on one side. The latter 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. A snow fort can also be a tunneled-out burrow built in a large snow drift.

Although the most common way to pack snow for a fort is by piling, pressing, and/or carving out snow by hand, possibly with the aid of a snow shovel, other ways exist. One way is to roll out several large balls of snow - possibly weighing over 200 lbs. each - as if making a snowman, lining them up in a protective barrier, and using loose snow as mortar to hold them together. Another way is to create cylindrical snow blocks by shovelling snow into a five gallon bucket and then compacting it. If made out of wet snow and left to freeze overnight, these blocks become almost indestructible. They can be difficult to stack into a stable defensive structure, but they can double as unwieldy yet powerful missiles capable of punching holes in enemy snow forts, knocking over a grown man, etc.

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

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