Walking in a Winter Wonderland

By VALERIE MARCHANT

It was at the end of the first day of my return to winter sports--a day I had spent skiing on powder, into which I mostly disappeared rather than fell as I descended a mountain in Colorado. Safely back at my hotel in Mount Crested Butte, I spotted a sign-up for a snowshoe tour. No one, it occurred to me, falls on snowshoes.

I'd even had some experience. But the snowshoes I had floundered through the Quebec countryside in as a child were heavy contraptions. As I set out the following morning with two young companions and an attentive guide, I worried about keeping up. After just five minutes' gliding over the snow, however, I was elated: not only could I keep up, I also felt buoyant--as if I were walking on water. A decade of technical innovation had transformed the ash-and-rawhide snowshoes I remembered into light aluminum frames with solid decking, easy-to-use bindings, and cleats that provide traction. I skimmed along for hours, oblivious to the effort, concentrating instead on the animal tracks and gorgeous scenery. By the time we emerged from the trees to gaze upon the Elk Mountain Range, I was hooked.

I am not alone in my newfound love for this 6,000-year-old means of transportation. Snowshoeing is the fastest-growing winter sport. Serious athletes are drawn to it, as are those who simply want to enjoy a winter wonderland or benefit from the low-impact, calorie-burning, cardiovascular workout that snowshoeing delivers. Best of all, since anyone who can walk can snowshoe, the sport suits a 74-year-old as well as a four-year-old. "Whatever your age," says Tory Kendrick, Nordic director at the Bretton Woods Mountain Resort in New Hampshire, "get out there on a three-hour walk and you are a little kid again."

Outdoor enthusiasts can snowshoe wherever there is snow--on a golf course or in the wilderness. Increasingly, they can also do so at ski resorts and on accessible trails. Tubbs Snowshoes and Atlas Snow-Shoe, which together control 80% of the snowshoe market, recognize that manufacturers must develop locations if the sport is to grow. Tubbs, a century-old company that created snowshoes for Admiral Byrd, provides a website www.tubbs-trailnet.com with detailed information for more than 2,000 snowshoe trails. Among Tubbs' most highly regarded routes are Bierstadt Lake/Rocky Mountain National Park (Colo.), Baker Park Reserve (Minn.) and the Appalachian Trail/Long Trail to the summit of Styles Peak (Vt.).

Atlas Snow-Shoe, founded in 1990 and known for its design innovations, has entered into partnerships with more than 30 ski resorts, including Alpine Meadows (Calif.), Aspen (Colo.), Boyne Mountain (Mich.), Snowshoe Mountain (W.Va.), Sun Valley (Idaho) and Whistler/Blackcomb (B.C.). At each resort Atlas provides rental snowshoes (for about $13 a day) and maintained trails, and offers guided tours. (To find a resort, visit www.atlassnowshoe.com.

Among the best places to snowshoe on the East Coast is Bretton Woods. Resting on the western slope of Mount Washington, the resort offers 62 miles of snowshoe trails, some of them in territory as pristine as that explored by John Cabot more than 500 years ago. Maria Martin, 38, snowshoes there with her husband and their two sons, ages 2 and 4. "We snowshoe on trails in the White Mountain National Forest," she reports, "and look out on the Presidential Range."

The world's leading snowshoe destination is Vail, Colo. On 40 trails, the combined Nordic centers at Vail and nearby Beaver Creek offer daily nature tours, sunset and full-moon events, plus various all-day outings that include a gourmet picnic and backcountry expeditions. Peg and Les Regenbogen, Easterners who have vacationed in Vail for the past 10 years, converted from cross-country skiing while there. As they glided through the mountains on snowshoes, they were thrilled to sight golden eagles, bighorn sheep and herds of elk. Les, 67, recommends Vail because "you can start at 10,000 ft. and get into the wooded areas, listen to the aspens creak as the trunks move back and forth, and enjoy the freedom and spectacular views." I'll probably never give up skiing, because shooting down a steep mountain is utterly thrilling. But I certainly plan to keep on snowshoeing.