Snowshoes are built to help the wearer walk over heavily banked snow. They are built to cover a lot of surface area so that the wearer does not slip down into the snow. The persons weight is distributed evenly over the entire shoe and thus over the surface area of the snow. Traditionally, snowshoes were made out of wood and have leather lacings. As time has gone on and new materials have been created, manufacturers started to make their snowshoes out of metal, which can be lighter weight and does not interact with the snow in the same negative way as wood.
Snowshoeing has been around for a very long time. It can be traced back to Asia over six thousand years ago. It was a practice traditionally believed to be begun by the Inuits and Native Americans. When they migrated to North America, they brought the snowshoes with them, and likely utilized them during the move. The early snowshoes may have been nothing more complicated than slabs of wood affixed to the feet of the walker.
As a shoes, snowshoes still remain largely functional in nature. Most people who use snowshoes do so for work or because their environment requires it for survival. They were created and built using white ash and rawhide strings for lacing. Even though the basic shape remains the same, snowshoes are put into three different shape and style categories. First there is the bear paw. It is oval shaped and designed to be used in the woods. It is smaller than the other varieties and used when the walk needs to maneuver quickly and deftly between trees and other obstacles. The Yukon snowshoe is over 46 inches long. It is traditionally used to cross wide expanses. The third variety, the beavertail, makes use of both the previous styles and creates a sort of combination of the two.
Rawhide went out of fashion in the 1960’s and was replaced with Neoprene lacing. This was better for the shoe as the rawhide needed constant attention due to it’s interaction with the elements. Later, the wooden frame was tossed in favor of an aluminum frame. Metal frames were much lighter than wood and deflected the snow much better, making it much easier to maneuver the shoes quickly and to get further faster. These technologies ushered in a period where many snowshoe for fun as well as for the additional reasons.
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