Snowshoeing

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

3" on the ground so far, with 8-20" predicted by Saturday night.
It's snowing like mad, but it's almost dark. Dusting off the trusty snowshoes for tomorrow morning!

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

OK, so we got a deep 16" of great snow last night, no ice or sleet.
I snowshoed about a mile through the woods on a trail. But I actually was the only one to break that trail today (everyone else probably quit being outside after shoveling out today), and believe me, it was HARD!!! All that deep powdery snow- I sank about EIGHT inches down with every step, and had to really lift my legs REALLY high for every step. I even had to cross several streams over a narrow board in my snowshoes! I found out it is not easy to tightrope walk in snowshoes. Although the whole trip was about only a mile, it seemed like more work than a 30 mile bike ride.

By the time I made it to my destination (a wooden bench overlooking an icey pond) my legs were shaking and rubbery, and my heart was pounding despite having rested briefly several times on the way. I brushed the snow off the bench and lay down on my back to rest a good long while. Man that felt good. When I looked up overhead, the sky was white and the black tree branches were all reaching towards the center of the bench clearing, it looked like a giant black lacey snowflake pattern in the sky over me, and i was right in the middle of the snowflake. Very beautiful. The woods were silent except for some woodpeckers and the streams babbling.

Going back over my own trail was a whole different story, if I kept to my own footprints I only sank about an inch this time- BIG difference, and much easier and more fun. I was glad to get back home. Tomorrow will be easier to do the same trail again. I expect to see some other prints on the trail tomorrow, maybe crosscountry ski tracks or even other snowshow tracks, like I've seen before. It's fun to guess from the snowshoe tracks whether it was a woman or a man who had passed on the trail, and what brand shoes they had. Makes me feel like a real tracker.

Here's a picture from today- we had already shoveled off the porch and paths, and unfortunately the wind had removed the pretty snow from the trees. But I climbed our little "Mt.Everest" for fun, where the snowplow guy had dumped some of the snow this morning. So there I am showing off on "the summit" in my snowshoes, just about to go out into the woods. -I didn't look quite so energetic by the time I got back, however!

[LBTC]

Woohoo! Serious snow! and good for you for getting out there even though it was so hard!

And the black snowflake imagery was very cool. Aren't moments like that the whole reason we do these things?

Today I put the snowshoes in the shed, and we rode our BIKES. Spring is sprung! (sorry to rub it in).

Hugs and butterflies,
~T~

[Crankin]

I had the same experience as Lisa today. Went on a 3.5 mile snow shoe, and it was really hard, just walking on a relatively flat trail. Most of it, you could walk on top of the frozen crust, but in other places, you sank down and had to really work to step up. Usually this trail is 4.3 miles, but my friends were tired, so we turned around and went out for cafe mochas instead...
Hopefully, I will be on my bike Thursday or Friday.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Went out along the same woodland trail today for about an hour and a half, but took the longer uphill loop. I followed some big man's snowshoe tracks, which was not always easy because he took much longer strides than I can, but still it was easier than breaking another new trail. No crust at all here, still very deep 15" inches of soft snow in the woods.

The trail is about 8 feet wide through this reserve. Yesterday I was the only one to leave a trail through the reserve, and I followed my own trail back again, leaving lots of space on either side for x-country skiers to make their own pristine trails if they wanted. Today I saw that this man in snowshoes had rather inconsiderately made a mess of the whole trail- he shoe'd all the way in making a big trail to one side of mine, leaving giant deep footholes....and then on the way back he shoe'd on the OTHER side of my trail instead of using his own trail back! Thus, in place of one snowshoe track, there were now THREE and the whole 8' wide trail was covered with deep huge shoe holes everywhere- those X-country skiiers are not going to be happy- and I don't blame them at all! It was ugly looking too. Why did this fellow do that??
I saw today that an animal had made use of my snowshoe trail from yesterday- for a long distance there was a trail in my yesterday's footprints of what looked like a cross between a large cat and a small very lightweight dog- I concluded it was a fox. Looked like dog prints but very small, dainty and pointy. No French poodles would be out there, for sure!
I got really thirsty midway out. I could not resist drinking from a stream, and I crawled to the edge on my tummy in the snow so I wouldn't break through to the mushy edges. I didn't want to scoop the water with my hands and make them too cold. I felt very "wild" lying on my stomach in the woods slurping from the rushing stream with my mouth...

Because the snow was a bit wetter today (no crust though) and I was able to use previous footprints much of the time, it was not as grueling as yesterday's trail breaking. Still a good workout though, for legs and heart. I'm getting faster at getting my shoes strapped on and off.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

Hey, snowshoe fans!

Just checking in this fine Autumn to say hi and are you getting excited yet thinking about snowshoeing this coming winter?

I wanted to post this link to some nice thermal waterproof Merrill hiking boots I just ordered:
http://www.onlineshoes.com/productpa...n=w&pcid=64085
One cool feature on them is that they have heel ridges that are specifically designed to hold snowshoe straps nicely in place without the straps slipping down! So great! I have to get the boots big enough to wear two pairs good heavy wool socks in them for the frigid cold. Will get back with a review once I wear them a bit.

[surgtech1956]

Nice looking boots, pretty good price too. Give us an update. I'm thinking about snowshoeing this winter. Do you have to have lots of snow in order to snowshoe? What do you do, just put your snowshoes on and go for a walk, hike????

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

I wanted to post this link to some nice thermal waterproof Merrill hiking boots I just ordered:
http://www.onlineshoes.com/productpa...n=w&pcid=64085
One cool feature on them is that they have heel ridges that are specifically designed to hold snowshoe straps nicely in place without the straps slipping down! So great! I have to get the boots big enough to wear two pairs good heavy wool socks in them for the frigid cold. Will get back with a review once I wear them a bit.

Well I got the boots and they seem just great- very comfy and warm.
I was surprised to find that the uppers are actually made of a non-leather heavy waterproof material, flexible and strong like rubber. They look and feel rather like leather, but are not. I like these boots, and they should work well with heavy wool socks and gaiters. They have Thinsulate lining for the cold.

Aside from the snowshoe ridge in the back of the heel, I found that they also have a little D-ring for your gaiters to hook onto right in the front top of the foot, at the bottom of the laces (the photo sort of hides them). That will be very convenient to hook my gaiter hooks onto. Gaiters are good with this boot, since the boot is not overly high.
Now all we need is some deep snow to try them out. Might have to wait another month for that.