Snowshoeing Adventure

My friend Michael found coupons for an outdoor excursion company that organizes snowshoeing trips and several of my friends and I purchased tickets right away. I've always wanted to go snowshoeing and had been dying to get outside. Really outside. I walk to and from work every morning and jog to the gym, but none of this feels like it counts. I wanted to see trees that weren't surrounded by slabs of concrete and birds that weren't pigeons. This is daily life in New York, but somehow it feels even more urban in winter, so I was very excited for this trip. After eagerly gathering all my ski gear the night before (we were told it would rain so I wore waterproof clothes, though thank goodness it never did), I met the van near Penn Station early on Sunday morning and we drove north for a little over an hour to a national park called Harriman. Our guide, Vaughn, showed us how to strap on our snowshoes and gave us about 45 seconds worth of instruction and we were off. It seemed like a rather skimpy introduction, but it turns out there's not much to snowshoeing - at least not in the conditions we faced.

The second peak,

Snowshoeing, I am told, is a very rigorous activity under normal circumstances. This has been a warm, relatively snowless winter, however, and so instead of facing drifts of fluffy snow we set out over trails made icy with packed snow and thin coverage. The metal teeth on the bottom of the shoes turned out to be great for digging into slick surfaces, allowing us to ascend and descend steep, icy areas with ease. I did not like having to step over lots and lots of rocks, however, which wasn't easy with the large, cumbersome plastic frames. Apparently this isn't really a factor in traditional snowshoeing because all of these hazards are covered up. But taking into consideration solely the amount of energy expended, we had an easier time of it than most snowshoers because we didn't have to maneuver through thick snow. Also, we did not have to install fins on the back of the shoes that you usually need for extra flotation, so our feet (which still felt pretty large to me) were smaller than they'd have ordinarily been.

Once I got the hang of the shoes, I turned my attention to the sublime scenery. Other than the sound of our walking--which was often pretty loud as we clattered over ice and rocks--it was still and peaceful. We started by a large lake and encountered lots of little brooks as we walked. For a Californian whose main experience with snow has been on groomed ski runs, the winter woods were magical. I loved the way the drifts extended over the pools of water, and the ice crystals on the pine needles were almost ethereally lovely. 

Our route zigged on and off a trail; we aimed for ice and snow to skip the bare patches. We climbed two "peaks" during the day and had lunch on the first one; although they weren't exactly precipitous, they did provide us with a nice view of the rolling hills and, from the second peak, the lake.

We spotted deer all over the place. I suppose they're used to people being nearby, because while they didn't exactly let us pet them, they weren't nearly as skittish as I'd have expected and didn't bolt until we were relatively close. We spotted lots of deer tracks as well as subtler bird tracks and imprints that were probably made by dogs, though we imagined we were seeing the trails of snow leopards. We ran into other hikers three times during the day, two of whom were accompanied by ecstatic dogs who bounded from one person to the next, seemingly deliriously happy to find more people sharing this enchanted space. Our greetings were always perfunctory, however, as they couldn't wait to charge back into the woods to continue exploring. We were the only ones in snowshoes; other hikers wore YakTrax-like chains that wrapped neatly around their boots to give them traction in the snow.

Our group consisted of seventeen people, though it felt small and friendly. There were five in the group I'd come with and I quickly became buddies with a foursome because three of them were Germans who pretended to be very impressed by my mangled high school linguistic skills. A few couples and our fearless leaders made up the rest of the crew. All in all, everyone was very good company, though we were not necessarily great hiking buddies. One woman was a very, very cautious walker in her snowshoes and we found ourselves waiting for her and her fiancee to catch up every fifteen minutes or so. I'm sure this shortened our route, but it gave us time to chat with each other and look around so I wasn't too sorry. 

One part of our walk was covered with downed trees. Vaugh explained that trees tend to grow their root structures to support them when it's windy, and because winds typically blow most strongly from the same direction all the time, the roots on one side of the tree are deepest and thickest. Hurricane Sandy, however, blew in from the opposite direction. Unprepared for this, many trees were knocked over. It was quite a sight. 

I could have kept going for hours, but it was getting dark. We piled back into the van and went to a nearby bar and restaurant where we shared beers and an enormous meal. I returned to the city in high spirits and eager to go snowshoeing again, though perhaps not this year. I want to try it out in some deeper drifts next time, and that's unlikely to happen before next January or so.