Daily BrewA beginner‘s guide to snowshoeing this winter
[Relaxing in a pair of modern snowshoes. / Thinkstock]
It’s a clear winter day and you’re at a loss of what to do. You definitely don’t want to spend another minute pretending to be a sloth on the couch, but the city rink is full and the ski slope costs a bundle. Instead, how about trying to go for a walk across the top of the snow?
Jennie Elmflie tried snowshoeing for the first time 12 years ago and hasn’t looked back.
“To be honest with you, I was really skeptical about it,” she says of trying the sport for the first time. “Like, come on, what kind of a workout is this going to be? And then as soon as I tried it I was like ‘oh my god, this is really good.’ I fell in love with it as soon as I tried it.”
Elmflie, based out of Collingwood, Ont., co-owns Free Spirit Tours, a company that specializes in outdoor adventure tours. They offer snowshoeing walks throughout the winter and Elmflie says it’s the kind of activity that can appeal to anyone.
“It’s just like hiking,” she says. “You can go really fast, or you can go really slow, we tend to take our time… As long as you can walk you can snowshoe. It’s really open to a lot of people.”
Why you should put on a pair
The health benefits of snowshoeing vary on how hard you push yourself. According to Elmflie, it’s a great cardio and leg workout, as well as a boost for your mental well-being.
“It’s great exercise,” she says. “Legs and cardio, but as well, I think, the most important is the mental. You’re outside, you’re unplugging, you’re just connecting with nature. I would say that’s the most important and what most people get out of it. They’re like ‘oh my god, this is beautiful.’ We’re passing by trees that have woodpecker holes in them and some people have never seen that before… You know, just getting them out of their daily routines and out in nature, that in itself, I’d say, is the biggest benefit.”
Elmflie says there should be about a foot of snow on the ground for good snowshoeing and that she advises her clients to bring a few essentials on a tour.
“We provide the snowshoes, and then we just tell people to wear snow pants if they have them. If people don’t have snow pants we say if they’ve got rain pants just wear warm pants underneath those. Winter boots are pretty key and then a winter jacket, a hat, and bring a knapsack because you might get a little bit warm, so that scarf might come off and that hat might come off as we’re hiking. And we always suggest bringing water because people do get thirsty.”
Perfect for first-timers
Elmflie gets a lot of first time snowshoers on her tours. She says they may be intimidated by the shoes at first, but once they get going they fall in love just like she did.
“Once you start walking in them it’s very easy, it’s very easy to catch on to and by the end they’re like ‘okay, I need to buy a pair.’ Because the greatest thing about snowshoes is you can just keep them in the trunk of your car and you can go anywhere in them. That’s the beauty of snowshoes, they’re so compact and you can take them anywhere.”
Free Spirit Tours gets a lot of families coming out for their winter walks and Elmflie says it’s always a lot of fun to have snowshoeing races with the kids, with even the adults get into it too. You can’t go very fast, but it’s good for a laugh.
“The other thing that’s fun to do with snowshoes that we do with our clients is we show them what a difference the snowshoes make,” says Elmflie about her tour. “So we’d actually have them (the clients) keep their snowshoes on and we’d be in a field and we’d say ‘this is what you’d be like if you weren’t wearing the snowshoes’ and we actually take our snowshoes off and we’d go through the snow. Last year when we had so much snow, we’d be up to our waist in snow, but when you’re wearing the snowshoes the snow would only be up to your ankle. They really do make a difference.”
Modern versus traditional snowshoes
Although people do bring their old-fashioned wooden snowshoes out on hikes, Elmflie suggests using modern ones if people plan on going uphill. Newer snowshoes are designed with picks along the bottom, so they grip into the snow and make it easier for walking up an incline.
“We use a brand called GV, which is from Quebec,” says Elmflie. “We find they’re a really easy binding system. We’re pretty hard on our snowshoes because we do go over some rock and stuff like that, so they get a lot of use and we find the GV ones are really durable.”
This winter, try taking a walk across the snow and see where it takes you.
