Observations on snow travel techniques

Everybody knows how much I love snowshoers :) Yes last year they were the source of many poke-funning blog entries. Hey I even went snowshoing a few times this year with my kids, notably the time when we dragged the 14-foot tree out of the woods. Well my snowshoes are huge - though not as big as those traditional wood-and-gut creations of old - they have a large surface area and can transport me with relative ease through deep snow. If I remember right, they were spec'd to support up to 200 lbs through deep snow - just right for me and a full overnight pack. Now I have to wonder when I look at the itty-bitty snowshoes most people are using these days : barely larger than their feet, and sporting all kinds of spikes and claws on the underside to facilitate grip in icy conditions. These look cool and all, but methinks they are better suited to mountaineering than traipsing through the gentle undulating terrain where I see most snowshoers as I'm skiing around. The snowparks all have marked snowshoe trails now, and 99% of the time that's what the snowshoers follow. They don't have much choice, because the teeny-tiny snowshoes they wear are only good for following a firmly packed trail. So they rarely venture off randomnly into the woods, which is when it actually becomes fun.

Now for an observation on skate-skiing, which I do a couple of times a week. It is kind of analagous to road-biking, being restricted to wide groomed trails (roads), and therefore a bit sterile and not so much fun in an exploratory way as charging into the wilderness on backcountry skis (which is my other pair of Nordic skis). However it is fun technically, as small gains in technique enable you to propel yourself more efficiently and with greater speed. It is competitive in the way cycling is, in that without acknowledging it, people engage constantly in subtle speed duels (well at least I do). When someone passes me, I try to up my speed to match them and stay with them. And if I see someone on the trail ahead, I do my best to catch up to them and pass them. This makes it 'fun' for me, otherwise I'm just going around in circles.

My first observation concerns the V2 skate technique. This is not the first one you learn, but a more advanced technique for high speed skating on flats and slight downhills. Personally I find it quite difficult, and unless I'm on a decent down-slope, I get out of breath doing it and it feels inefficient. So I'm usually doing V1 or V2 alternate. Now I see everyone else doing a lot of V2, as though it's the trendy thing, kinda like itty-bitty snowshoes with spikes. But it seems to me as though most of these V2'ers are quite inefficient and would be better off perfecting their V1 first (this I notice as I glide by them V1'ing).

That's it for today's observations. In the future I may actually say something that is helpful to somebody, if you are lucky.