The Abominable Snowman
Have you ever seen an 8 foot tall snowman before?
Well, now you have.
Me with the 8 foot tall, 300+ lb. “Abominable Snowman” I made this morning in the background
This morning I woke up to about 5 inches of the best packing snow I’ve experienced in a long time.
The last time we had such good packing snow and made a snowman was two years ago. I wrote about it on my blog in Funny Snow Men.
Today, I shoveled our driveway, and then got to work on making a snowman.
The base rolled up so easily that I kept rolling until I could hardly move it anymore. I think it weighed about 150 lbs.
Then I rolled the second level. Again, it rolled up well. But I had to make sure it wasn’t so big that I couldn’t lift it onto the base. I think it weight about 100 lbs, but I was still able to lift it and get it into place.
Then I rolled the head level. I think it weighed about 50 lbs. I lifted that into place too. Then I added snow to the snowman to even it out and cover the leaves and dead grass I had picked up rolling the balls up.
There it was – a perfectly good snowman. And the tallest one I had every made.
Frosty, my son, Canyon, and I
My 6 foot 9 inch snowman and I (I am 5 foot 10 inches tall)
Then I measured it with a tape measure and took a picture of the tape measure that I held up as high as I could reach – 6 foot 9 inches tall. Not bad!
tape measure at 81 inches, or 6 foot 9 inches, of the original snowman
But I wasn’t happy with it. I wanted to make it BIGGER so I could say I made a 7 foot snowman.
I tried adding snow to the top level, but it was too high. I would have had to either get a chair or ladder to add more snow to the top of it and pack it on.
Then I had a better idea — add a 4th level and make that the head! Three layers are standard snowman stuff. Everybody does that. A 4th layer would make it a genetic snowman freak – absolutely abominable!
I quickly worked and rolled a 15 inch snowball. I then added a face to it while it was on the ground using radishes for nose and mouth, and a couple of old stove knobs for the eyes. I just barely lifted it into place high enough to stay on top, and then quickly packed snow in around it to steady it on top.
Voila! An 8 foot tall, 300 lb. snowman in my yard to stand guard and scare off the riff raff in the neighborhood.
All in good winter fun. It looks like today’s snow will keep us from traveling as we had planned, but it won’t stop us from having some winter fun today. I hope you get out there and have some fun in it too.
The Abominable Snowman – all 8 feet, and 300+ lbs. of him – standing guard in my yard
The Abominable Snowman comic courtesy of Ed Novick Comics
Do you have a favorite snowman-making memory? Let us know about it in the comments section below.
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