This group is for me (and anyone else) to post pictures they're taken of artworks created using snow and / or ice.

They may be horizontal or 3-D

I suspect most of the artworks will be my own but who knows? I have never seen anything comparable made by anyone else, but they aren't hard to do. Good exercise, yes, but not particularly difficult. I have placed it in the walking category as they are made by walking about in snowshoes.

They are made by a kind of reverse orienteering. The main lines and points are surveyed using a sighting compass (as used for surveying orienteering maps), with distance either by pace counting or string. The main reason for making them was because I can no longer run properly due to problems with my feet, so plodding about on level snow is the least painful way of getting exercise. Gradually the reason has become photographing them, and I am considering buying a better camera.

I have also included more general pictures I've taken in the outdoors so that others may see what I do when I'm not plodding about in the snow, so feel free to contribute a picture if you like.

Many people have asked bow long they take? Well, usually I keep at it until I get too tired, using a headlamp if it gets dark first. It takes typically 5 hours until I can't go on, but that depends on how tired I was at the beginning of the session and the proportion of the time that was spent on the relatively un-energetic task of setting out the key points in the design, which requires care and accurate measuring rather than flogging thru the snow in a more or less continuous manner.

As a 'ball park figure' in average snow conditions an area the size of a soccer field would be comparable to half the ascent of Mont Blanc starting at the nearest road (Bionnassay), a vertical climb of 1550m.

The setting-out serves as the warm-up then the real training is completing the design. There is a plan to make a time lapse video, I HOPE!