Melting Snow and Ice ©

 

A fire-safe pot half full of snow, photograph by Author.

 

To watch a video on “Melting Snow and Ice” for drinking water, go HERE – Author’s Note

 

You are out in the woods in the winter wilderness and your canteen is getting a little low, you are surrounded by snow and ice, you don’t need to worry about water, right?  Right?

 

Well yes and no.  All that snow and ice is just as pure as the source it came from, which might not be that pure.  You should always disinfect any water you melt out of snow or ice.

 

You must turn all that snow and ice into liquid water to disinfect it.  If there is plenty of fuel and you can get a fire started or have a stove, and you have a pot that can withstand the fire, boiling your water to disinfect it might be your best option.  Don’t forget, during winter treks warm drinks can help you maintain your core body temperature.

 

For more information on how long to boil your water to disinfect it, read “Water Disinfection: When is boiled, boiled enough…?”, HERE.

 

But, before you boil it, first you must melt that snow and ice!  Did you know that, since snow is such a good insulator, if you just put a pot of snow over a fire or on a stove you will either scorch the pot, giving the resulting water an awful smell and a burnt taste, or you will melt a hole in the bottom of your thin-walled cook pot! 

 

To avoid burning the bottom of your pot, you need to “prime” the pot with some liquid water before you put it on the stove or fire to boil.  You should always put a small amount of water into the pot as “seed” water, it acts as a barrier between the heat source, the pot, and the snow or ice.  The article “How to Melt Snow...” recommends putting a cup (8 ounces or 237 ml) of water into a two-liter (68 ounce) pot and bringing it to a boil, before you add snow or ice to the pot.  Other sources recommend adding about an inch (2.5 cm) water to the pot and bringing it to a boil before you start adding snow or ice. 

 

A picture of my fire-safe pot, setting by the fire, photograph by the Author.

If you don’t have any liquid water to “prime” the pot, something you can do with a fire, but not with a stove is, you can put your pot full of snow and ice near the fire¹ so that the pot and the ice slowly warm up and then as the pot slowly fills with water, add more ice or compacted chunks of snow to your “seed” water, stirring occasionally, until you have enough water to “prime” your pot so that you can put it over the fire to boil.

 

But what if you don’t have a fire-safe pot to melt your snow or ice in?  The United States Military Manual, Survival FM 21-76 has the following suggestions regarding how to melt snow and ice.  You could use your body heat to melt the snow, by placing the snow or ice in a plastic waterbag between your layers of clothing.  This is a slow process, and it might chill you and put you at risk for hypothermia, but it could be used if you don’t have a way to make fire or are on the move.  Additionally, they suggested that you could put the snow or ice in a cloth bag, such as a Millbank water pre-filtration bag, and then hang the bag near (but not over) the fire, above a container to catch the resulting melt water.  In both cases, if you don’t have a fire-safe pot that can withstand the heat of a fire or stove, you will have to use UV, mechanical or chemical means² to disinfect your water.  For more on this read, “True or False, You Should Drink Water From The Spring Where Horses Drink? ©”, HERE.

 

A Ziploc® bag of snow, that you could put inside your coat, photograph by the Author.

 

A cloth bag in front of a fire, used to melt water, hanging on a tripod.  Photograph by the Author.

Remember in a short-term survival situation it is better to drink suspect water, than not drink any at all.  As Peter Kummerfeldt teaches, “A doctor can fix giardia, but he can’t fix dead”, or “doctors can cure a lot of things, but they can’t cure dead”, I have echoed this survival refrain since I first heard it in 2005.  When worst comes to worst, and you are facing dehydration, drinking actually or potentially infected water is better than not drinking any water at all. 

 

Not all snow and ice are created equal, and all things being equal, you should use ice, old granular snow and last of all, fresh, new, fluffy snow in that order when you are trying to make melt water.

 

An excerpt from How To Survive On Land And Sea, 1956, by Frank C. and John J. Craighead, page 43.

The reason for this is that the denser the snow or ice you put into your pot the more water it contains and the more that you will have to drink when it is fully melted.  Ice, which is the densest of all, is almost all water.  Old granular snow, which is basically small pellets of irregularly shaped ice, is less dense than ice, but more dense than new snow, it contains more water than new snow, but less than ice.  New-fallen snow is the least dense and contains the least amount of water.

 

Additionally, ice has the least amount of dead air trapped between the individual pieces.  Old, granular snow still has a significant amount of dead air space surrounding the individual crystals, even if you pack it.  New fallen, fluffy snow is, well...fluffy, and it has the most dead air space trapped around the individual crystals of snow.  The reason why this is important is that this dead air space is what makes snow such a great insulator and why it can burn your pot!

 

The author’s firepan, photograph by the Author.

 

I built my fire on a firepan, which you can see in the picture above, as I was putting out my fire.  Originally, my firepan was the base of a broiler tray from an old toaster oven that I re-purposed after it broke several years ago.

 

“So, why did you build your fire on a firepan?”, you ask.  That is a good question, and here is the answer.

 

There are two reasons and the first is that when you use a firepan, it does less damage to the ground below; particularly, since in this case the firepan is resting on a bed of gravel.  It is always a good idea to leave as small a footprint as possible, when you wander through the woods.

 

The second, and more important reason in this case, is that if the ground is wet or you are in a low spot where the water table is close to the surface, as the fire grows it warms up the moisture in the ground below and draws the resulting water vapor upwards, this can make it difficult to keep the fire going.  I built this fire on a gravel bank, along a frozen creek and the water table was only inches below it.  Plus, there was a lot of wind-blown snow and ice mixed in with the gravel.  None of this would have been good for my fire, so I put a firepan down and built my fire on top of it.

 

Don’t forget to put your fire out when you are done.  If you don’t feel any heat coming up from the charcoal and the ashes, then it is out.  I doused my fire with some water and after I pulled my firepan out, I heaped snow on the remains and stirred it around until everything was a soggy cold mess. 

 

The soggy, cold remains of my fire.  Don’t forget to put your fire out when you are done.  If you don’t feel any heat coming up from the charcoal and the ashes, then it is out.  Photograph by the Author.

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at Bandanaman Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Notes

 

¹ Survival FM 21-76 recommends this, especially if you are using improvised pot.

 

² For and excellent article on emergency disinfection of drinking water, read the EPAs “Ground Water and Drinking Water: Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water”, HERE.

 

Sources

 

Department of the Army, Headquarters; Survival FM 21-76, March 1986, [Washington, DC], pages 5-2 to 5-3 and 15-15 to 15-16

 

Craighead, Frank C., and Craighead, John J.; How To Survive On Land And Sea, [United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD, 1956], page 43

 

Lewicky, Andy; “How To Melt Snow For Water”, May 17, 2008, http://www.sierradescents.com/2008/05/how-to-melt-snow-for-water.html, accessed January 23, 2021

 

Nesbitt, Paul H., Pond, Alonzo W., Allen, William H.; A Pilot’s Survival Guide, [Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, 1978], pages 130-131

 

Schimdt, David; “Winter Camping Skills: Melt Water”, October 29, 2010, updated February 14, 2017, [© 2021 Pocket Outdoor Media Inc.], https://www.backpacker.com/skills/winter-camping-skills-melt-water, accessed January 23, 2021

 

Werner, Philip; “How to Melt Snow…Without Burning a Hole in Your Cooking Pot”, [© Copyright 2007-2020, SectionHiker.com and Fells Press LLC], https://sectionhiker.com/how-to-melt-snow-without-burning-a-hole-in-your-cooking-pot/, accessed July 29, 2020