It’s All in the Shoes

I don’t ski anymore. I snowshoe. There are a lot of reasons why I switched, but maybe the biggest reason is the shoes. Yes, the shoes, the boots you wear to keep your feet warm and dry.

When I learned to ski, in the 60’s, ski boots were made of leather. They were comfortable. There were periods of time in the following decades when I did not ski, and then I would rejoin the world of skiing for awhile. Each time I went back, the shoes had changed … they kept getting more high tech until finally, the designers went completely nuts and designed ski boots to look like something an astronaut would need to walk on Mars with. They look weird, feel weird, and aren’t at all comfortable. The last time I went downhill skiing, about 5 years ago, I couldn’t wait to get those things off my feet. It might be one of the biggest deceptions ever hoisted on the consuming public.

I switched to cross country skiing. That was fun. The boots were made of leather – very nice leather – and they were still measuring the length of your ski by the length of your body, standing, with your arm outstretched, skyward. (That was also how they used to measure downhill skis, back in the day.) Then the high tech industry got into the x-cross ski business, and started messing with it. You can buy very weird-looking high tech backcountry boots now if you want, but fortunately, you can still buy good leather boots, if you prefer. You can also buy funny short skis, which is probably a good idea as you are less likely to fall and wreck you knees, something I am avidly trying to avoid these days.

I’m getting older. (Who isn’t?) I am much less willing to risk wrecking my knees, or breaking something these days. It seems to take a lot longer for things to mend. So now I snowshoe. You’d have to be really dumb and clumsy to break something while out snowshoeing.

The switch came when I met someone who winter camps. He’s a botanist, and when he was younger, he did rare plant surveys that kept him outdoors during the winter, sometimes for months at a time, so he learned to winter camp. We started going out together, for overnights, with his groovy tent and back packing stove. We both had skis, and at first went out like that, with heavy packs on our backs. After a few years, we decided it might be better with snowshoes. He had some old school Eskimo-style woven leather snowshoes that he wore with a pair of Sorel snow boots. I tried it for awhile, and decided it was too cumbersome plodding along like that.

We tried some of the new snowshoes on the market, and learned that the most important thing is to find a maker that lives in a similar type of snow country as you do, who can make a snowshoe suitable to your region. We live in northwestern California where the snow is wet. Big storms blow in off the Pacific and dump inches of rain on the coast. Thirty miles inland storms will drop a foot of snow overnight at 4000′. When the storms are coming south from Arctic Alaska we get the good powdery snow, but even then, it can fluctuate from several feet of powder to iced-over crust in a few days, if a Pacific storm comes in after the Alaska storms. MSR’s are the ideal snowshoe for this climate, but it’s a regional thing … if you live in New England, you probably want some Tubbs. Red Feather’s are a great snowshoe made in Colorado, and are best in dry powder. We have both MSR’s and Red Feathers. The fun thing about snowshoeing is you can wander around in the forest in places where you cannot go on skis. You can run downhill in flying leaps through deep powder when you start wishing you had your skis…

Anyway, back to boots. We finally woke up and realized we could do better than those old Sorels. Sorel makes great boots for tromping around in the snow, but only for short distances, like going out for firewood or to the barn to feed the horses. If you’re planning to walk a few miles, or go out snowshoeing for the day, you need something more molded to the foot, something with more arch and ankle support.

The search began for the perfect winter snowshoe boot. This year we think we found them (on the internet, of course.) They are made by Salomon, and are called B52’s. Isn’t that ridiculous? I mean, wasn’t a B52 a big warplane used for bombing raids during the Vietnam war? Why would a designer think that would be a good name for a winter sports boot? We ordered some in spite of the name, and yes, they are the perfect winter hiking/snowshoeing boot. They are waterproof as it gets, and warm enough to be out all day in, and super comfy. They are more high tech looking than a regular hiking boot, but still mostly leather. Thank you, Salomon.

It snowed all last week in the mountains and we are heading out in the morning. See you later, laptop …