There were 5 in the party. I partnered with Fred to dig a cave while the other 3 dug their cave nearby. We completed our cave and got situated inside. Fred just wanted to rest and climbed into his sleeping bag. I knew hydration was important after the effort we had been through, and a hot drink would calm us down for the night. I started up the stove but before the snow melted the stove went out. I tried to re-light the stove, but the matches would not burn! Several attempts produced the same result; my brain cells were operating just well enough to finally realize we were running out of oxygen. Had I climbed into my sleeping bag we might have dozed off never to waken.

I tried to open the cave entrance to let in air and found it completely clogged with snow. Fred panicked and started frantically digging out; he was so out of control that I got out of his way and packed our sleeping bags and other gear away to keep them from being filled with the snow he was throwing back into the cave. After we got out, I dug out the other snow cave and warned them that they would need to keep watch and make sure they got air through the night. Our cave was filled with snow from digging out so we essentially had to dig it again.

It was difficult convincing Fred to get back into the cave. To ease both our minds, I set my alarm for 1 hour, then we unpacked our gear, shed our foul weather clothing and climbed into our sleeping bags. After a sleepless hour, we had to repeat the process of packing our gear, getting our outer garments on, digging out, digging back in, etc. I set my alarm for ½ hour and we settled in again. The next time we were able to push our way out and were finally able to get some sleep as the snowfall abated. However, it was difficult to sleep knowing we might be in the middle of an avalanche slope and there was literally tons of new snow to fuel avalanches.