May 26, 2004

Snowshoe racing takes off

By Morten Lund

The snowshoe is making a comeback. More efficient models of the classic four-foot three-pound snowshoe are making snowshoes more user-friendly, offering a more dignified form, absent the awkward bowlegged gait that the classic snowshoes require. Now the snowshoe is bidding for popularity among a new population of snowshoe racers. In fact, snowshoe racing has evolved into a nationwide competitive sport of several million participants in the last decade, stunning turnaround.

Snowshoes are evidently about to make wintersports history, and it may become an ally of winter resorts originally founded mainly for skiing. In fact, snowshoeing and skiing have a notably intertwined semantic as well as chronological history. The first serious academic researcher into early American ski history, Norway's Jakob Vaage, went about this country fifty years ago delving into local newspaper morgues to find the early traces of the sport. He was mystified at the lack of articles about skiing until he discovered that skiing in many parts of the U.S. was called "snowshoeing." From then on, Vaage unearthed a rich vein of research for the North American section of Vaage's 1952 Norske Ski Erober Verden, or "Norwegian Skis Conquer the World," for which Vaage now could make a pretty good case.

The probable cause of the semantic confusion was Native North American historical development of winter travel. Native Americans were the world's only prehistoric peoples living below the Arctic rim that did not develop skis of any sort but rather focused largely on toboggans and snowshoes. American pioneers who observed the natives took to calling anything that enabled humans to walk over the snow a "snowshoe."

But that was reversed after the immigration of Norwegians and alpine Europeans peaked by the turn of the last century, bringing the culture of alpine skiing, alpine skis and ski teachers with them. Even the iconic enterprise of arctic exploration was largely given over to skis after Amundsen's successful expedition on skis became the first to reach the South Pole in 1911. It gradually became cool. as it were, to say "ski," rather than "snowshoe." Dethroned semantically, and then culturally, snowshoeing began to diminish, identified as "so 1800s." It was definitively marginalized by the American rush to alpine skiing during the 1930s and 1940s.

Organizations like the Dartmouth Outing Club and the International Scholastic Winter Sports Union of North America-the college winter carnival circuit-saw the status of snowshoe racing decline as an intercollegiate sport. Slalom, jumping and nordic cross country became the excitement of the collegiate winter carnival.

But now comes the historic reversal. The modern one-pound snowshoe has a slight asymmetrical shape to enhance the running stride, and sharp cleats for traction. Mark Elmore, sports director of the United States Snowshoe Association, ties the new spurt of growth partly to the lightweight 22-to-25-inch aluminum frames with urethane decking and spring-loaded bindings that pop off with little effort.

And then Elmore attributes it to the discovery of the sport by endurance athletes. Many of these racers have switched to snowshoe training by riveting running shoes into the snowshoe frame in the winter. The added cost of equipment and racing is reasonable. Snowshoes run from $200 to $300, and race entry fees are $5 to $35. The learning curve is not steep. If you can run, you can snowshoe and the cost is reasonable.

Nine regional events sanctioned by the National Snowshoe Association in five divisions produced 167 finalists for national competition at Squaw Valley last winter in open, masters, juniors, and seniors. Many winners failed to show up, partly because of failure of snowshoe makers to cover cost. The United States National Snowshoe Championships was still a fairly impressive event, according to a report by Alicia Ault, a New York Times reporter on location during the cloudless, crisp race day at Squaw when some 90 snowshoe-shod men, women and sexually indistinguishable teenagers in light, loose winter clothing bunched at the starting line.

At the starting gun, racers began pounding up a ski slope rising 800 feet, then went crunching through powder .before making the descending leg during which the most dogged skidded straight down a steep pitch on their backsides. The racers finished by sprinting around a meadow. The top ten in all the divisions did it in creditable time for amateur outdoor runners considering that the race was run at an average altitude of 6,000 feet.

."It's a whole lot more competitive than it was four years ago," a reporter was informed by Nikki Kimball. Kimball, a 32-year-old physical therapist from Plattsburgh, New York, became this year's women's champion by dint of finishing in 47 minutes 31 seconds. The men's champion was Greg Krause, a 26-year-old triathlete from Denver who finished in 40:07.

Bernie Boettcher, a 41-year-old from Silt, Colorado who finished third had started snowshoe racing to train for mountain running and kept at it when he realized it let him train year-round. Peter Fain, a 31-year-old trail runner from Truckee, California, said one reason he started snowshoeing was that "Here you can't train as usual in the winter unless you want to run along the side of the highways, which is foolish."

The Outdoor Industry Association estimates six million showshoers of whom about a million are hardcore participants, From 5,000 to 10,000 people participate in the 100 or so races held each year from December to March in Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Alaska and California. There are international races in Canada, Finland, Japan, Italy, France, Colorado and New York. The top five finishers at the nationals win slots on the United States snowshoe team, which will compete internationally if finances match ambitions.

New York has the most showshoers of any state. The United States Snowshoe Association was established in 1977 to regulate qualifying events for the Empire State Games. Then based in Corinth, New York, the nonprofit association moved to Plattsburgh in 2000. But for most competitors, snowshoe racing is not about prizes but about fitness. Endurance athletes have found tromping through snow on webbed feet offers a superior workout where they can burn 500 to 1,000 calories an hour.

"It's the best training I do all year," says Mark Macy, a 50-year-old trial lawyer from Evergreen, Colorado who won the men's masters division at Squaw in 51:15. When not arguing cases, Macy runs ultra-marathons and competes in adventure races like the Eco-Challenge. He has won the 100-mile IditaSport snowshoe race in Alaska three times.

Macy says snowshoeing is more forgiving than regular running on aging joints. But young participants, like Macy's 21-year-old son, Travis, are becoming more numerous. There are even preteens giving up slumber parties in favor of natural enhancements such as rosy cheeks. Eleven-year-old Breanna Gunnarson placed second in the junior girls' 5-kilometer (3.1-mile) race and has been racing since she was 8. Her motivation, she says is that snowshoeing has the cachet of an exotic enterprise because, "it's a sport not many people know about," even in her hometown of Longmont, Colorado.

Efforts to get snowshoe racing into the Olympics have been unsuccessful so far. Commercialization has been modest. The sport currently offers mostly nothing but the thrill of victory, and perhaps a T-shirt and sometimes a small pu8rse to those who finish first. But the big events are amateur. There was no prize money at the 2004 nationals (but then the entry free was only $10.)

Obviously the potential is there. The spreading discovery of snowshoe training and racing by the nation's joggers and runners can swell to a point where it outstrips skiing and snowboarding together. Resorts will begin striving to maintain wintersport market share by laying out snowshoe circuits alongside their tubing hills and halfpipes. There will be NASTAR snowshoe races for all. Given all this, can a Snowshoe World Cup Circuit be far behind?