Customer Reviews

The Snowshoe Experience: A Beginner's Guide to Gearin Up & Enjoying Winter Fitness (Get Out & Do It! Guide)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This a great book. I have purchased 5 copies over the past two years and given them to friends and students that are interested in snowshoeing. The author knows what she is talking about! You do not have to have a lot of previous experience to enjoy this book. I highly recommend this publication for beginner and intermediate level snowshoers.

This is a very well written, easy to read guide to the sport of snowshoeing, which wold be a lot better if the author was not so adamant about her dislike for wood-framed snowshoes. Her beliefs, based evidently on a single bad experience an untold number of years ago, are that traditional wooden snowshoes are "heavy" and "awkward", causing the user great pain because of "lack of traction...exhaustion and soreness brought on by the straddle walk" and "wearying waddle gait". Well, I have been using Maine-style wood and rawhide snowshoes for almost 40 years and I have never "waddled" nor experienced the balling up of snow she complains about. This might all be excusable if she didn't literally add insult to injury by referring to myself and those like me who prefer wood-framed snowshoes as "iconoclastic Luddites". Obviously, Ms. Walter has never taken to the snow on a pair of Ojibwe or Green Mountain-style snowshoes, many of which are no wider than their modern, aluminum and nylon bretheren. Traction can be added simply by clamping a pair of removeable crampons to the 'shoe under the feet, and good bindings can make all the difference in the world.

All that being said, the book is extrememely well written, and informative even for the experienced snowshoer. She even talks eloquently about the history of traditional snowshoes. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on "The Winter World" about things to watch for (and watch out for) while snowshoeing. I just hope that before she revises the text, Ms. Walter opens her mind a bit, and tries some properly fitted traditional snowshoes.

A good book for learning about snowshoeing. It includes the history of snowshoes, how to snowshoe, and even some things to enjoy along the way - i.e. animal tracks in the snow.