Sunday, December 12, 2010

First Snowshoeing of the year

Today was my first opportunity of the season to head out side and make tracks in the snow with my new snowshoes. Earlier in the year, actually it was in August, I had made a pair of Ojibway style snowshoes. Read the post here. I had been dying to try them out.

We don't really have a lot of snow on the ground right now but there is enough for snowshoeing. I was very pleased with the way the snowshoes performed. I found they were light under foot, tracked straight, and kept me afloat on what little snow we have. They are much longer than my new style GV's so I was concerned that I was going to have to walk with an extra long stride but that wasn't the case at all. While walking normally the shape of the frames fit together very well and there was no stepping on the sides of one shoe with the other.

There is, however, a bit of a learning curve. My GV's are much shorter in the toe area making it easy to cross step in front of one foot with the other. Not even thinking about it, I had turned to talk to Zoe and stepped on the front of my own snowshoe and down I went. Snow was tossed in all directions and in the end I was covered in the white stuff.

Home made Ojibway style snowshoes

It was very windy -18 degrees C (-28 degrees with the wind)

2 comments:

Bryan Sarauer said...

That was a brisk wind yesterday for sure!

Great to hear that you are happy with the snowshoes. Of course you'll have others placing their orders in no time.

Where I was (near Dana)snowshoeing yesterday there was a lot of tall grass and small shrubs. The snow, while not amounting to that much, piled up on top of the vegetation. With snowshoes on I was easily able to walk over top of and through it. With just boots on it would not have been as pleasant.

Cheers,
Bryan

Bryan Sarauer said...

By the way, how did Zoe like her hand-me-down snowshoes?