Anchorage Daily News

When more than three dozen people turn out for a weekend snowshoe up Girdwood's Glacier Creek, it becomes suddenly clear that snowshoeing isn't just for Shawn Lyons anymore.

Who is Shawn Lyons, you ask?

An Anchorage author and musician, he was a local snowshoeing legend back in the 1980s when the now-defunct Iditasport -- run under the motto "cowards won't show and the weak will die" -- staged an annual 100-mile snowshoe race through the Susitna Valley to Skwentna. Lyons was never the fastest snowshoer on the Iditarod Trail, but by the end he invariably proved to be the steadiest.

Hour after hour for three-quarters of a day, he could cruise across the snowy expanses at 5 or 6 mph. Lyons, a long-time runner, turned to snowshoes as an alternative to pounding the pavement.

These days, bunches of Alaskans are turning to man's earliest snow-travel invention as the most approachable form of winter recreation.

Anyone can snowshoe. The learning curve is short and shallow.

"The entry barriers are low," said Doug Van Etten of Anchorage Adventurers Meetup Group, which organized the Glacier Creek snowshoe hike.

Photographs taken during that early-January hike give the outing more than a passing resemblance to the historic pictures of early gold seekers lined up on Chilkoot Pass outside Skagway. Conga-line turnouts for snowshoeing events hosted by the group are typical, Van Etten said.

Where ski or snowboard trips might attract only a half-dozen people, he said, snowshoe hikes will bring out dozens who want to play in the snow.

"It's easy," he said. "Everybody can go together. There is no high skill level.

"You can rent them for cheap. You can rent them for $15. You can buy them for cheap."

A 21st-century snowshoeing boom has created enough demand for snowshoes that beginner-level shoes are sold at cut-rate prices in big-box discount stores. Van Etten said he's seen them in Anchorage for as little as $65.

That's dirt cheap, considering that a single all-day lift ticket to ski or snowboard at the Alyeska Resort costs nearly that much.

Throw in a daily ski or snowboard rental and the total $82 expenditure for the day is well above the cost of a pair of snowshoes that can provide winter recreation for months on end.

"My wife has given up skiing to snowshoe exclusively because she truly enjoys the relaxation of floating on powder with her snowshoes and not being concerned about falling going down a hill, or if she will have to add more grip wax to climb," said Ted Angstadt, an assistant organizer helping Van Etten with the Meetup Group.

"Sometimes I just want to throw my snowshoes and poles in the car and go. Less hassle, good exercise and simple fun."

"Good exercise" might be something of an understatement.

"Snowshoeing burns up to twice the number of calories as walking at the same speed," according to Snowshoe magazine. And that's on a trail.

Break trail through untracked snow, and the calories burned on a snowshoe hike can quickly exceed a fast-paced run or hard nordic ski.

"No joke," said Van Etten.

Because snow cushions every footstep, the body pounding is minimal while the aerobic workout gained by lifting the weight of the snowshoes and compressing snow is tops.

Not that anyone has to go all out all the time to reap aerobic benefits.

"We seem to be getting large turnouts for snowshoeing trips because it is a slower-paced way to enjoy the beauty of winter," said Angstadt. "I have heard some in our group say that 'it's a great equalizer.' It is a lot easier to walk with others in the group and have pleasant conversation because you are not worried about falling or going slower or faster than others."

All of these things have helped contribute to the steady growth in snowshoeing recently, particularly among women.

A 2005 Outdoor Industry Association participation study found the number of women snowshoers up 72 percent nationwide.

Mary Hertert of Anchorage is one of them.

"I am not an accomplished skier, but am an avid clomper and bushwhacker so I love the freedom snowshoes provide," she said in an e-mail. "Snowshoeing is the best and easiest way to get people who are not skiers out into the Chugach (mountains) and the area parks.

"New people who have come from non-snow areas and find moving around in the snow difficult can now traverse easily and in a manner to which they are used (to) -- by walking."

Hertert said she finds herself turning to the webs more often than the boards for winter recreation.

When she's not leading snowshoe outings for the municipal Parks and Recreation department -- which offers classes in snowshoeing -- she can be found, in her words, "happily crawling under the alders to get into areas I couldn't have gotten to on skis, (although) I still like walking along creeks the best."

Find Craig Medred online at adn.com/contact/cmedred or call 257-4588. CRAZIEST, CRAFTIEST MAN ON SNOWSHOES?

Consider Albert Johnson, aka the Mad Trapper of Rat River. He's the stuff of Northland mythology, a crazy man on snowshoes who led the Royal Canadian Mounted Police on a weeks-long chase across the Northwest Territories into the Yukon in the frigid winter of 1932 after shooting a Mountie executing a search warrant.

"Albert Johnson seemed to be no average trapper," according to the Web site Mysteries of Canada. "The Mounties said (he was) capable of great feats and crafty beyond belief. The local Inuit said at one point in the chase that Johnson could snowshoe two miles for every mile a dog team had to break trail."

Having traveled 150 miles in five weeks up and over the 7,000-foot peaks of the Richardson Mountains in temperatures often 40 to 50 below, this snowshoeing maniac was finally chased down -- thanks to the first known use of aerial surveillance in the north -- on the middle section of Yukon's Eagle River. Shot nine times in a battle with the Mounties, he died there.

Other than the name by which he'd identified himself, the Mounties never found out much about the man. Although the chase garnered widespread news coverage throughout Canada and the U.S., no family member ever showed up to claim his body and no one claimed to know him before he showed up on the Rat River in the summer of 1931.

"During the entire manhunt, the Mounties never heard him speak a word," according to Mysteries of Canada, "and yet he had over $2,000 in cash and some placer gold in his possession."

Johnson, of course, turned to snowshoes as a practical form of transportation for a fugitive in snow country. Shawn Lyons, a long-time runner, turned to them as an alternate to pounding the pavement.

FOR INFORMATION on the Anchorage Adventurers Meetup Group, go to

adventurers.meetup.com/109

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