A new vibration apparatus for measuring the shear strength of snow has been designed and fabricated. The force applied to a snow block is calculated using Newton's second law. Results from this apparatus concerning the dependence of the shear strength on snow density, overburden load and strain rate are in reasonable agreement with those obtained from the work of previous researchers. Snow densities ranged from 160 to 320 kg m -3 . The overburden load and strain rate ranged from 1.95 Â Â 10 -1 to 7.79 Â 10 -1 kPa and 2.9 Â 10 -4 to 9.1 Â 10 -3 s -1 respectively.