Ahhh.... now I'm beginning to see where we might disagree
You are talking about talking a few feets of snow and building something up,
I am talking about, in very cold and dry enviroments, actually excavating caves in the snow, I am talking 10-12 feets of snow.
So I guess, Jay, that's the difference in where we're comming from.
But as spring closes in, and temperatures start to vary around the freezing point, the walls and such hardens as Jay points out, (not to mention the neighbourhoods cats having used it as a place too pee for a few months) makes the sound change quite a bit to the worse.