Making snowshoes

We spent the day (Sunday) making snowshoes. Our patrol group of Boy Scouts and parents assembled early on a clear, brisk morning to begin work. We started by heating gray PVC pipe over propane burners to form the snowshoe frames. The careful application of heat and some clever forms created the shapes needed out of the straight lengths of pipe. Some jigs guided the drilling of about 50 holes per shoe, then some simple assembly formed the empty frames. After lunch, we retreated to the warmth of the basement where the real work began - string and weaving the platform within the frame. The picture to the right shows the final fitting of the binding that holds the boot.

None of the operations is terribly dangerous or difficult, but neither is any of them easy. Overheating of the tubing makes for bizarre shapes and flattened plastic instead of the gentle curves of rounded tubing, and extreme overheating will burn the gray to a peeling brown. The challenge of getting the heat just right keeps the kids focussed. The drilling isn't hard because the templates are so good, but several participants had to interrupt their weaving to go back outside to find a missing hole or two (so to speak). The real challenge is the weaving of the ropes. An error in the over-and-under pattern can only be repaired by removing the work since the error, then redoing it all. I joke that I made 15 snowshoes yesterday but only finished two. But the 11-year-olds will be proud to be out on the trail this winter on snowshoes of their own construction. Here's a (nearly) finished snowshoe to the left. A rubber binding triangle will be attached to hold the sole of the shoe over the yellow braid while the white braid helps provide the "float" over the snow. The bar in the Scout's hand is where the ball of the foot goes; it is PVC over a steel rod to transfer the weight of the snowshoer to the frame.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!