I AM UNDETERRED. As spring pushes the sun higher, I rally. This time I'll build a whole new village, a dozen at once, in a sweeping meadow deeper in the wilderness. I order two more Iceboxes, top off Betty's tank, and sound the battle cry.

"Friends, countrymen, fellow lovers of spring: Wait! Winter hasn't gone away completely yet, and that means igloo party," I write in a mass e-mail. "With three people working per kit, we can crank out three to six igloos each day. Who's in?"

The transmission is a bit unnecessary, since my gimp viral campaign has somehow worked. In fact, it's kind of shocking. Women have stopped me outside the pub to ask me about my igloos, a first on many levels. E-mails fly in.

Brett: "My 'gloo's gonna rock! iPod speakers?"

Jill: "FUN! I'm 75 percent so there!"

Then this: "Hello! Your e-mail was forwarded to me through a few friends. I wanted to let you know that both my hubby and I are in for Saturday."

I have no idea who she is, but I type back, "That's great!"

It takes two days for Betty and me to ferry in what feels like 500 pounds of bacon, burger, cheese, eggs, candles, pots, pans, skis, chairs, and a two-burner stove.

"I'm excited!" reads the last e-mail I get from Tania, now almost four months pregnant, before I head back out.

But Tania doesn't make it, nor do most of the others. The weather drops from 45 and sunny to 25 and soup. It snows so hard the morning of the big day that our junkyard caravan gets lost in a whiteout. "We're getting hosed," Heidi relays into her cell phone to friends debating whether they should come.

With half the day gone, the seven of us who do make it manage to build just two igloos and part of a third. One friend's face swells up so much from windburn that you'd think someone had stuck a pump in her. I sleep terribly that night, getting dripped on the whole time.

"I think I'm ready for winter to be done," Heidi says the next morning.

Maybe I am, too. But then I poke my head out and see that the storm has passed. Broken Top, a 9,175-foot volcano, glows pink in the pale morning light, snow spackling its summit. Everywhere I look, buttery lines slip through trees and bowls now choked with a foot of fresh.

"That's beautiful," Alex says, stretching outside his igloo. "Want some bacon?" Others emerge. We all look worked—but relieved and somehow satisfied, too.

By now the ski lifts at Mount Bachelor are warming up. No doubt the slopes will be chewed by noon. Here we laze in the warming sun and drink coffee. There isn't a soul around. In the distance I spot a lovely ridgeline just beggin' for a 'gloo.