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1. Choice of location

The most important element is to anticipate the likeliness of camping above the snowline, and to ensure you have suitable anchors. Without these, you will face great difficulty establishing a securely pitched tent.

Location is also critical as it’s going to take you longer than usual to pitch your tent and you don’t want to have to do it twice.

There are a few more things to consider in snowy terrain, including a few serious hazards identified below:

1. Ridgelines could be corniced.
2. Be aware of avalanche hazard. Avalanches can occur on slopes as gradual as 30 degrees and avalanching snow can travel an alarming distance. We’re not qualified to go into detail here but http://www.sais.gov.uk/about_avalanches/ is a good place to go for more information.
3. Those enticing flat spots you see around you could be snow sitting on ice of unknown thickness or where snow has drifted over a stream.
4. Trees can provide good shelter from prevailing winds but don’t camp directly under them. Snow can slump off from conifers and flatten a tent and branches can break under high snow loading.

2. Choice of site

If you’re expecting calm weather, then choose the flattest safe site you can find. However, if you’re expecting a storm, then think about ways to protect your tent using the terrain around you. Make sure that the site you choose has enough space to pitch your tent in its most aerodynamic position, especially if you can’t find any natural shelter.

3. Site preparation

Compact the snow in the area you’ve chosen and make it as level as possible. Try to keep the area you’ve compacted only a little bit bigger than the footprint of the tent.

If you’re pitching on a slope it might be worth digging in a bit to make a level platform. Use the snow from higher up to level off the slope further down.

4. Anchors

It’s much harder to get good anchors in snow. Dedicated snow pegs (at least 30cm long and 4cm wide) are good in compacted snow, but not many people carry them as they’re quite heavy and expensive. Winter equipment such as skis and ice axes also make good anchors. However, you will need additional anchors to these and plastic or fabric bags (that can be filled with snow or rocks) are the easiest, lightest and cheapest options. Note you will probably need carabiners to attach these to the pegging points.

Many telescopic walking poles can be dismantled into sections and these can make excellent anchors in the snow – not vertically like a peg, but buried horizontally. Skis are excellent when used this way, and a pair can do front and rear pegging points very effectively.

You can also tie guylines around rocks and even bury them in the snow for extra security. Having spare cord is very useful for this.

Prioritise your anchors points in order of importance and use your best anchors for the most important guy points. Our recommendation is:

1. Rear and front pegging points
2. Main guylines (facing direction of wind)
3. Other guylines
4. Side pegging points

5. Improving your site

You can make snow walls to help protect your tent from strong winds. Personally, we prefer to build them a short distance (a couple of metres) back from the tent, as windblown snow tends to accumulate behind them.

6. During the night

Some interesting things can happen in heavy snow. If there’s not much wind, snow might settle on the roof and you’ll need to knock it off from time to time by punching the roof from the inside of the tent. Snow that slides off the roof will settle around the sides of the tent and over time might accumulate and start to push the sides of the tent in around you. You may have to get up from time to time to clear away snow from around the tent.

In windy conditions, windblown snow can blow under the flysheet and accumulate under the eaves and in the porch. If this is happening, be careful how you store things in the porch of the tent. Consider keeping things inside a sealed plastic bag or even inside the inner tent as putting on frozen boots filled with snow isn’t very pleasant! It’s also very easy to lose things by treading them into the snow or if they get buried. We’ve lost several pan handles this way!

7. Choice of tent

We’ve written all the above based on personal experience and we think that most tents can be used satisfactorily in the snow providing they’re of good quality. We’ve spent many snow nights out in two-pole tunnels and semi-geodesics. Specialist mountain tents are often stronger than backpacking or trekking ones and will stand higher snow loadings, but even the best tents will give an uncomfortable night’s sleep or fail if they’re flattened by an avalanche, anchored poorly or pitched fully exposed to strong winds.

Finally, if you intend spending a lot of time camping in the winter, we would strongly recommend that you consider taking a tent a little larger than you might otherwise use for backpacking. Having more space makes sense with bulky sleeping bags, and makes getting dressed – to perform unpleasant middle-of-the-night tasks like checking anchors or clearing snow – that much easier.