They’re not as popular as they once were, but every Alaskan could use a pair of snowshoes

Snowshoes. No, they are not big boots that keep your feet warm. Snowshoes attach to your boots and make your footprint bigger, thus making it easier to travel on soft trails or across deep powdery snow. There are many types of snowshoe used today. Most do not resemble the original product and are used primarily for recreation rather than necessity.

Anthropologists believe that the first snowshoes came on the scene 4,000 to 6,000 years ago. The Dolomite region in Northern Italy is thought to be the location where some sort of shoe was first used. The first snowshoes were hard, thick rounds of leather that doubled or tripled the shoe size of the wearer. Gradually the design was improved to include wood and leather.

The Plains Indians of North America likely developed the first deep powder snowshoe. Some of the snowshoes used by Canadian tribes around what is now the U.S.-Canadian border were 6 feet in length and a foot wide. I have a pair of wood and babiche shoes that were made in Watson Lake in the 1960s. They are 65 inches in length with a birch frame and a sharply upturned toe and have fine babiche cross-lacing. The shoes are almost a foot wide. They take a little practice to move about on, but once you gets the hang of things, you can move right along.

Snowshoes were developed by necessity. There was no other way to travel or hunt in deep snow conditions. Before horses came to the Plains, Native people hunted buffalo on snowshoes. Drifted snow, with soft sections between required a little different design. Bear Paws came along; a shoe a couple feet long and 15 inches wide. The walking technique requires the wearer to throw his leg out sideways while swinging forward and then back in so as not to stumble on his own feet.

In the late ‘50s or early ‘60s, the military copied the traditional wood and babiche models and manufactured a snowshoe made with a magnesium frame and plastic-covered cable cross hatching. These snowshoes, now discontinued, are possibly the best all-around snowshoe ever developed. They are almost indestructible. I trapped with a set of these in the Black River country in 1973. I put about 1,500 miles on them without damage or repairs of any kind. I still have them and actively use them; I actually put a half-dozen miles on them today.

[In Alaska, we get plenty of snow. But what do we really know about it?]

Horses were put on snowshoes sometime in the 1800s. In Alaska, supplies were freighted into the Valdez Creek mining district (on the Denali Highway) in the 1920s. Horses pulled 1,000-pound sleds of supplies out of Valdez, along what is now the Richardson Highway. They continued up the Middle Fork of the Gulkana and on to the Susitna River on snowshoes. There were still some of these relics in an old horse barn on the lower Maclaren River when I first trapped that country in the 1970s.

I would guess that not many horses know how to walk in snowshoes today. Snowshoes have made a resurgence in the past decade, though. A newer style recreational-type shoe has been developed. These are small shoes, rarely more than 2 feet in length and 8 or 9 inches in width. They have an aluminum frame and solid neoprene foot pad. Some people use poles with them, which sort of defeats the purpose of a snowshoe; one doesn’t need a ski pole, thus has hands free to carry gear (cameras, a rifle?). These newer style recreational shoes have their place. You may not get around well in soft powder but will make good time on a soft snowmobile trail.

They are an excellent safety tool for avid snowmachiners. Try walking 5 miles on your back trail to the highway, from a broken machine, without them. They are very easy to carry on the back of a sled and are almost impossible to damage. Ice fishermen find them handy for staying out of overflow on lakes. Winter campers use them to pack down tent locations.

All Alaskans should have a few pairs. Our family did a fun walk late today out through the spruce under a full moon. Snowshoeing is great exercise and a novel way to get the family outdoors during winter months. Drifting silently through the trees one can imagine an Indian stalking a bison on the plains, or a British soldier preparing for the 1758 Battle in snowshoes during the French and Indian War. Ah heck, my 9-year-old wants hot chocolate; back to the house. The attraction may have been snowshoeing — or maybe the hot chocolate — but we did get out.