January 22nd, 2010 | 
Author: Please. I’m ready for it.
I ordered new snowshoes from MEC yesterday. Now, I’ve always been a traditionalist with snowshoes. I have a pair of willow and rawhide Huron shoes that my parents bought for me in the 70’s and they’ve always done the trick for me. Until last February when Greg and I hiked in to the cottage. A large portion of that walk was on the ice and having two big frames of wood strapped to one’s feet is downright dangerous on the ice. Greg was marching along just fine on his plastic and aluminum abominations while I wound up having to carry mine across the ice, then put them back on when we got to the Island.
You see, the bindings on his had crampons (ice spikes) built into them. Bastard.
Fast-forward a year. We’re planning our trek for the last weekend in February again and I really didn’t want to have to go through that nonsense again. It’s a might difficult carrying those things while wearing a full pack. They are 120cm long and about 45cm wide after all.
So, I was cruising through MEC’s site and found MSR Denali’s on sale for $110. Not bad. Big scary spikes on the toes AND side rails. They’re also smaller (55cm x 30cm or so). Size matters with snowshoes, though and MSR made a really cool design decision with them: you can buy two different sets of extension tails to increase their flotation ability. So, while the original shoes have a rated capacity of 60kg, the 15cm tails more than double it to 125kg. Woot!
Traditional Huron snowshoes:
The new ones:
Posted in Life
Ooh those are cool. We have a cross country ski club near here and the trails look so gorgeous. Apparently you can snowshoe them too. I’ve been toying with taking it up when the kids are in school full time. I love the idea of walking out where the only noises are you.
I hope for you and your new snowshoes to have snow but only in your neck of the woods. I have a new house with an old roof and I’d just as soon not see any white stuff until after it gets fixed. Next winter, say.
Oh goody – now Gary can wear your old ones when you cross the ice this year!!! Take pictures, will you??? *snicker*…
I remember those olf wicker ones growing up. A bunch of us had them, and we’d snowshoe and cross country ski to school sometimes—it was faster than the bus after a snow!
Love snowshoeing. Our whole family has fancy-pants metal tube and plastic snowshoes.
It’s great stuff. Mine appear to be languishing in Richmond, BC. The online package tracking tool with Canada Post has showed them there since Friday. Not much use for them here, though: it was +7 and raining all day today.