Product Description

The hottest thing in winter sports today is snowshoeing. It offers a great cardiovascular work-out for people of every age and fitness level. It's a low-impact sport, much simpler and safer than skiing. And modern aluminum snowshoes (the wood-and-moosehide models have been retired) are inexpensive, lightweight, sturdy, and look cool.

In The Snowshoe Experience Claire Walter acts as a kind of snowshoeing personal trainer, showing novices how to get maximum enjoyment out of an ancient wintertime activity that has become today's coolest cold-weather sport.

This is an activity kids, adults, and even seniors can do. Athletes will find it is a great way to stay in shape during the winter months. Couch potatoes will find that this is a fun activity that will lure them outside. And kids really love it. Snowshoeing is truly a sport for everyone.

Walter insists that if you can walk, you can snowshoe. Walter takes you, step-by-step, through the basics so you'll feel at ease--whether you are tramping across an open meadow or an urban park. And if you want to kick it up a couple notches, Walter discusses hiking in snowshoes, running in snowshoes (she supplies a list of places where you can find snowshoe races), and back-country adventures with snowshoes--including winter camping.

Whether you want a quiet walk across the snow, something with more of an adrenaline rush, or anything in between, The Snowshoe Experience is the one book that helps you do it all.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #138660 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Review

“Get the most out of snowshoeing experience with Walter’s guide to the best trails and racing venues in North America.” – Black Powder Guns and Hunting

About the Author
The author of Snowshoeing Colorado and 23 other books, Claire Walter has also written numerous magazine articles on skiing, snowshoeing, scuba diving, and fitness. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Customer Reviews

Great Little Book
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.

Good writing, but close-minded
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.

The Snowshoe Experience
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.