Ask any expert about the way to stay alive in a cold northern winter and they’ll tell you this: Keep moving! Don’t fall asleep!

No wonder every recreation of the season in white involves going from one place to another. We ski from up to down or across country. We rev up the snowmobile, dust off the toboggan, get out the skates (this is for short, back and forth trips) and harness up the dogs.

Those take too much coordination for me. Plus, my boyfriend Miles O. Shore’s dog, Agate, drags me around whenever she sees a squirrel all summer long, so why give her any more opportunities, I figure. What’s left, then, for the likes of me when the world turns white? Hibernation? Sounded good, but unlikely to fly with my mom and sister Thimbleberry. So before the first flakes fall this year, I’m checking out a final on-the-move option: snowshoes.

Walking from place to place on big feet frankly isn’t much different from what I normally do. It’s just about that easy, claim the folks in the know when I wander down to Duluth Pack Store in Canal Park in Duluth, Minnesota, for a couple of tips. Right off, Dan Madson, a helpful young man, wants to get personal. 

“The No. 1 thing is that you get a snowshoe that’s going to carry your amount of weight,” he says. Your weight, what’s that supposed to mean? Turns out that means a person’s weight and anything he or she might pack on a winter hike. Using that criteria, I can come up with an approximate weight, claim part of that is going to be a pack I have no intention of carrying and still come off with some dignity. I give Dan a rounded figure, which is the kind of figure I’ve always had.

The weight a pair of snowshoes will carry can determine the size and style of shoe that best suits the wearer. Snowshoe shapes range from a squat, rounded Bearpaw to the pointed-ends, elongated Ojibwa. Shoes can reach 14 or so inches in width and 64 inches in length. 

These styles developed to better distribute larger amounts of weight and also to accommodate terrain. For example, most smaller lengths work better in highly wooded areas while the longer, harder to turn snowshoes increase speed and weight-bearing ability for those traveling far distances in straight lines.

For our neck of the woods around Lake Superior, an Alaskan and Michigan style, with their rounded noses and long tails, work well. The Ojibwa, which points at both ends, brings the advantage of those longer styles while eliminating the round nose that can cause a problem in the deep woods. An oblong “Green Mountain” style in the Iverson snowshoe line also offers an around-the-lake option. But the mountain-tackling Bearpaw brings little or no help here, Dan says.

“Any snowshoe will take you where you want to go,” Dan explains, but the better fit of shoe to wearer weight and travel conditions, the easier the going. Oh, and by the way, unless the snow is extremely hard-packed, no one strolls across it without a little give. A better matched shoe will reduce the depth you sink, but sink you will.

“Are you sinking six inches down, 12 inches down or three feet down?” Dan gives examples of snowshoe adjustments.

Snowshoeing, Gene Prater’s how-to guide recommended by the pack at the Duluth Pack, suggests that snowshoes first crunched through the flakes as early as 6,000 years ago. Those were slabs of wood. The more “modern” versions tie a stretched lattice-work of rawhide to wooden frames. New high-tech metal-framed models began recently making their appearance. 

Dan, who uses his snowshoes on wolf-tracking treks into the Superior National Forest, swears by rawhide and wood. 

I like that version, too, because you could eat your snowshoes if badly lost, although I don’t think that’s part of Dan’s preference. He favors the flexibility and the way the lattice-work shakes the snow loose from the lacing. The high-tech “Western” models tend to save that snow around the solid-piece center.

After you’ve admitted your weight and determined your most-likely-to-succeed style, the next decision is how you’ll attach your feet to the shoes. Slight variations on the basic four styles abind … I mean, abound. Leather, rubber and neoprene are the basic binding materials.

Big or small, snowshoeing is an activity available to the whole family that can take you to wonderous places during the months of winter. 
MICHAEL SHEDLOCK

A binding should keep the foot snugly in place without restricting movement. It should keep the snowshoe under control. “If you pick up your foot and wiggle (it), your snowshoe should do the exact same thing,” Dan advises. 

Tighten the binding adequately, but remember: more is not “more better” in this case. “It should be tight, but not to the point where you’re restricting blood flow. Then your feet get cold,” Dan says. The same common sense applies to clothing. Boots, wear warm winter boots for heaven’s sake, it’s winter out there. And scarves and hats and mittens and all those things your mother has tried to get you to put on for years. Nothing will make a snowshoeing experience more short-lived and miserable than inadequate clothing.

Outside of your own clothing, snowshoeing novices can get the two basics — bindings and snowshoes — for about $150. 

Shoes on, bindings sufficiently tightened … you’re ready to roll. And you probably will roll a couple of times, admits the expert. (“Everybody still takes a spill,” says Dan.) But basically, snowshoeing is basic. “It’s walking … with bigger feet,” says our expert. That clicking you hear with the first few steps, that’s your snowshoes tagging off as they pass each other. You’ll get over it. The shoes, if you notice, are cut to fit one beside the other as you step. Whatever you do, don’t walk like you’ve got on that bulky snowsuit your mom used to stuff you into as a kid. Walk normally and take the whole thing in stride. 

“The reality is, you just walk,” advises Dan. “It takes people about an hour to acclimate to snowshoeing because it’s still just walking.” 

Simple: Keep moving! Don’t fall asleep! With something that easy, guess even I will be able to stroll through winter. 

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