“When life hands you lemons, quit making analogies about fruit drinks. Get off your ass and do something.”
Winter is already here. I hardly remember summer. It was all a blur! Oh well, winter’s undeniable so so there’s naught for it but to make the best of it. Winter comes with snow. Snow, if you live far enough north, is more or less impassible on foot. Most people hardly notice this because they never venture beyond cleared paths and manmade (plowed) areas. I try to get out there where God intended… with mixed results.
I don’t have ten grand to drop on a mid-level used snowmobile (and I know little enough about snowmobiles that I’d probably get screwed in the purchase). The solution (or rather one of many adaptations) is a set of snowshoes.
This ain’t my first rodeo. I already got me some snowshoes. However, they’re beat to shit. Thus, life’s video game offers a side quest. “Your snowshoes are shot. Buy new? Or rebuild?” I decided to rebuild ’cause that’s how I roll.
[Note: I have experiential knowledge using traditional snowshoes. I don’t know about the market for them and especially new technologies. I just bought a pair and used them for 35(!) years. If the newfangled ones are God’s gift to mobility I simply haven’t experimented with them enough to know. Forgive any inadvertent error in my upcoming advice.]
Broadly speaking, snowshoes come in two types: traditional and modern. (I’ve no idea what some REI salesman would call “modern” snowshoes. I do know that nothing REI sells is “traditional”. Virtually any big box “sporting goods” store might stock a zillion modern snowshoes but no traditional ones.)
Ugh… I just know someone is going to pedantic me into the ground for this topic…
Deep breath. Here goes:
Traditional snowshoes (like mine) are based on a largish elongated wood hoop, usually but not necessarily ash. This is crisscrossed (laced) with a mesh. The mesh is either rawhide (hard core traditional) or something that looks like a flattish widened shoelace. The hoop and lacing (regardless of material chosen) is slathered with a big dose of waterproofing (usually varnish). YMMV but I think the shoelace stuff is both cheaper and lighter than rawhide. I’m not implying the shoelace material is inferior. My snowshoe is laced in rawhide; which was a lot more common 35 years ago.
They come in an array of shapes. Here’s an image with three different shapes of traditional snowshoes. I found it at “Snowshoe Magazine“. The important point here is that there’s a magazine about snowshoes! I did not know that. Did you know that? I’m sure they’re super experts compared to me.
The job of a snowshoe is to float on the top of the snow. Snowshoes vary in this because snow itself is highly variable. A snowshoe will work best under condition X and less well under condition Y. None are perfect for everything.
Traditional snowshoes generally float more than modern variants. Thus, they’re better for deep snow. This can be a big deal if the snow is soft and fluffy. If you’re sinking into snow that’s balls deep, life can really suck. It’s easy to get exhausted flailing around in the drifts. Waist deep snow with no or inadequate snowshoes will feel like crawling through cement. After 100 yards you’ll be battered and a mile of that shit might kill ya’!
On a traditional snowshoe, some snow pushes through the mesh with each step (at least if it’s fluffy snow). That’s ok, it’s a game of percentages. If 95% stays underfoot and 5% comes through, it’s great. The snow will (hopefully) fall back through the mesh on your next step.
If the snow is wet and sloppy, sometimes the mesh will get gummed up with packed snow. It’s not a big deal. Periodically kick your snowshoes clean and pray for colder weather.
If the snow is tightly packed, a snowshoe can often walk on top like it’s a sidewalk. That’s the best!
Also, and I’m not recommending this at all, snowshoes will spread your weight out if you’re on thin ice. (It’s better to never go on thin ice of course!) At least once in my life, snowshoes have “saved” me when I “walked” right over an open well! It had a thin layer of snow and some brush covering it. It was more or less invisible. Without snowshoes it might have sucked me in like a pit trap! (I still shudder a little when I think about that!)
The point I’m trying to make is that floating on top of snow is a good thing but to do so requires an uneasy compromise between forces. Traditional snowshoes lean towards always floating in the worst scenarios at the expense of being larger and a little less ideal for “easy” conditions.
I tend to assume traditional snowshoes are heavier but that’s not necessarily the case.
Part of the weight is the same for both kinds of snowshoe. With any snowshoe, you’re going to be wearing big honkin’ boots. Big boots are heavy. I’m thinking of getting mukluks. I don’t really need them but I really like saying “mukluk”.
All snowshoes have bindings. (In my opinion all snowshoe bindings suck.) Bindings tie the snowshoe to your pre-existing boot or mukluk. They pivot when you step, often dragging the rear of the snowshoe like a lizard’s tail. They adapt to any boot; the exact opposite of downhill skis where you need special boots to match the crap you’re strapping to the boots.
Traditional snowshoes are tough. They’re pretty much unkillable. Within reason you can use them as improvised snow shovels or balance them on top of a drift at the edge of a plowed area to give yourself a place to sit. You can probably beat a wolverine to death with them.
My limited experience suggests that flat out hard core winter trekker / camping people (which has got to be the smallest % of the population you’ll ever find) prefer traditional snowshoes. I’m not 100% sure of that because I go alone and I’m no longer super hard core about it. But that’s how I’d bet. If you’ve got a neighbor planning to “winter hike” the Iditarod Trail, he’s probably using traditional snowshoes. Just to be sure, ask him for me.
Traditional snowshoes are probably best for heavy loads. Weight sinks. If you’re a beefy (Curmudgeon sized) woodsman, the smaller modern variants might not help you as much. And by the way, heavier weight doesn’t mean you’ve been sitting on the couch freebasing Twinkies. It could be from a heavy pack, fifteen layers of jackets, ice fishing gear, or carrying stuff. If you’re lugging a chainsaw or an elk quarter, you need big snowshoes.
I’ve run a chainsaw while on traditional snowshoes! I’m not saying I recommend it, but it works. Smaller modern snowshoes might not help you with those kinds of challenges.
If you’re in deep snow, far from the packed trail (thus encountering all sorts of changing conditions), and possibly working or carrying a load I recommend traditional snowshoes.
Also traditional snowshoes make you look like a mountain man! Who doesn’t want that? It’ll match your beard. If you don’t have a beard but snowshoe a lot, you will grow one. (As for the ladies, the workout of snowshoeing means you’ll eventually have an ass like hardened steel. Go for it, you hot nature goddess!)
Traditional snowshoes come in a million shapes. Some are narrow and long, for snaking through the underbrush. Others (like mine) are wider for drifts. Every shape is a compromise between opposing forces. Wider snowshoes (like mine) will have you walking bow-legged like a cowboy.
There are many kits and workshops to build your own traditional snowshoes. I think this is cool and they look like a fun project. Don’t assume the thing you’ll build will be inferior. It may be just as good as anything you can buy. My snowshoes were purchased so I don’t get brag about building my own gear. Then again my snowshoes lasted a long time and have earned a place in snowshoe Valhalla.
In my next post, I’ll talk about “modern” snowshoes.
Traditionally, the proper way to make snowshoes was with ash limbs for the frames and animal sinew for the ties. Teddy Rooseveldt wrote quite a bit about his time in the Dakota Territory, before coming back east to be a politician, and mentions running down elk and moose on snowshoes where the poor beasts had to break through snow while he could just tromp along atop the snowpack. Eventually the animal would be exhausted and a single shot from close range would do the deed. In the upper Midwest the mukluk can be had via the simple expedient of prairie dog fishing. Take a heavy river rod and line between 10 and 12 pound test, load up a treble hook, and bait it with peanut butter. Cast it out into the prairie dog village. If no animals show an interest you can slowly reel it back to generate movement. Eventually one will approach with some trepidation and sniffing. Wait him out, just play it a bit, and be patient. Eventually one prairie dog will grab that hook and run. Keep the drag off, reel open, let him run and get up a good head of steam and then lock the reel and pull back hard and *SET THAT HOOK*. If he swallowed it, and you pull hard enough, you’ll turn the little critter inside-out and then all you have to do is scrape the hide and let it dry in the sun for a day or so to make traditional mukluks. I may have made up one of those stories. A bit.
The wood traditional snowshoes that have been used up here (a little bit north of you) are the long narrow ones. I remember looking at the wide oval shoes and wondering how anyone could walk using them. The narrow ones are the ones I learned on, we have 3 pairs. They look really cool on the wall. The ones we, well I use since my wife skis, are Atlas 36”. They are lighter than the traditional and the decks are solid-no mesh! I fell in love with them the first time I used them and haven’t looked back. The bindings locked and cranked down on your boots. On the underside are kinda steel crampons that are about 2” high. On my first outing with these I went right up a tree and brush covered hill. With my wooden shoes I would have had to find a way around. I almost fainted with giddiness. Don’t really know what state-of-the-art is today cause I still have my first pair.
You said: “You can probably beat a wolverine to death with them.”
That looks like an excellent start to a new story, bro!
I’d love to tell that story from the point of view of the wolverine. “I was walking down by the stream when this lunatic human starts wailing on me with some sort of foot tennis racket! I shit you not!”
If you need to re-lace your snowshoes, go to a wreckers yard and grab a couple of seat belts and use them to fill in the frame. Cheap as chips, nylon so they won’t rot and light. That is a tip from a Norwegian guy I was in hospital with about 40 years ago. He was hard core too.
Phil B
But remember that nylon stretches when wet and shrinks when it dries. As someone who has used nylon rope.