For DC-area snow lovers, the winter of 2014 has been a welcome change after successive years of disappointment.
Snow has blanketed the area several times this season, with the biggest totals so far recorded on Thursday (February 13th).
With schools and businesses closed, newly-built forts and snowmen were a common sight in neighborhoods across the area. On the Capitol College campus, a group of students went further, constructing a massive igloo which they dubbed “Da Ultimate.”
What began as a simple spur-of-the-moment idea soon evolved into a full-fledged engineering project involving students from college apartments B2 and E1.
The group – consisting of Garrett Baseley, Shawn Berube, Andrew Durkin. Mark Evans, Anthony Lacilla, Ramin Nadjmabadi, Bryant Rogers II and Luke Snyder – worked eight-hour shifts over a three-day period, stretching from the daylight hours into evening. In all, the ambitious structure took more than twenty hours to complete.
Large bins were used to fashion bricks for the base. After that, the students molded roof bricks with the help of small trash cans, and carefully wedged them into place.
Conditions were often tough, ranging from heavy snow to freezing rain, with gusts of ice-cold wind for good measure. In addition to the less-than-friendly weather, the igloo builders had to contend with a formidable engineering challenge.
“A lot of us were initially discouraged,” Mark Evans said. “We didn’t think the roof could be built.”
Still, the group pressed on. With ingenuity, determination and teamwork, they succeeded in exemplifying the Capitol motto: Aut inveniam viam aut faciam (“I will find a way or make one”).
When completed, the igloo provided a roomy – if somewhat slippery – place to hang out.
“It’s big enough so that someone who’s 6 foot 2 can enter it and not hit the ceiling, and you can comfortably fit around 10 to 15 people in there – even more than that,” Evans said.
“We ate a meal in there, just to say that we did,” he added.