SNOW SEASON STARTS slowly, but by Thanksgiving a veritable winterkrieg has strafed the forests with fine white pellets. We load up and head out.

Betty purrs comforting clouds of blue smoke as we motor north of Mount Bachelor, cruising past fellow snowmobilers, who raise their fists in salute. We must look like a hippie junk show. Tania and I sit squished on a one-person seat. Scott rides backwards on a trailer so he can hold on to his dog, who's freaked out. Alex tows behind us on his telemark boards, clutching a rope like a water-skier. "Woo-hoo!" he shouts, scribing a few S's in the snow.

As with all real estate, location is the most important factor when building igloo villages. "How about Todd Lake?" Alex suggests when we stop to rearrange the gear. "It's a perfect spot."

With its Forest of Endor landscape, pleasant saddle, and tumbling ridges, Todd Lake is indeed a perfect spot. It's about three miles from the trailhead, so people can reach it on skis. "I guess we don't need to worry about zoning laws," Scott jokes. He's right. Building igloos on public land—even a village of them—raises no more legal issues than building an army of snowmen. Being good developers, we'll leave no trace. We stash the snowmobile near the lake, click into skis and strap on snowshoes, and slip past trees that are four feet thick.

"This is the place," I say upon reaching a clearing high over the lake. I haul out the Icebox. "Igloo Ed says we need to build the foundation first."

Ah, Igloo Ed, inventor. The man who makes it possible. Here we must pause.

The master and I have never actually met, but I know several things about Ed Huesers. At 58, he looks like half of a ZZ Top cover band. And, based on a photo he e-mailed me, he doesn't wear pants, at least not when he's wading across streams in winter. "It was ten degrees out that day," he wrote, looking like a hero.

"For me, igloos are just superior," Ed says, noting that even modest-size igloos are twice as roomy as a three-man tent. They're also quieter and warmer, because the thick blocks of snow hold in body heat.

But the problem with making traditional igloos—by stacking blocks in a dome shape that you hope will hold—is that they collapse easily. "It takes a lot of skill to get the right curve," says Ed.

The right curve is the catenary curve—a self-supporting structure like the Gateway Arch, in St. Louis. Ed, a machinist from Longmont, Colorado, set out 13 years ago to design a kit that would help you build consistent blocks and set them into a stable dome. In 1998, he emerged from his garage clutching what became U.S. patent number 6,210,142 B1: the Icebox, which is a plastic block-shaping form attached to a telescopic pole. The form makes perfect blocks, while settings on the pole guide their placement. At $170 a pop, the kit makes bombproof domes that spiral up like a spring.

Ed makes 'gloocraft look easy, but at the site we're having problems getting the blocks to line up properly. It takes us six hours to do what he does in three, but the walls rise steadily. By dusk, we're looking at two completed igloos.

"This is so cool!" Tania says as we belly-slide like penguins into the enclosure.

Soft light filters through the walls. We high-five and kick back as the temperature inside begins to rise. We dub the first structure Gloo Eins, because that sounds better than Gloo One. We call the second one Bigloo, because it's big and sexy.

"This igloo village shall forever be known until spring as Glooville," I proclaim. "Now let's get out of here." It's Sunday, so we can't stay, and a storm's rolling in. Betty gets us out in time.