davidof - 10 October 2009 10:43 AM
You can see that Eric’s technique is to drag his snowboard on a leash and climb on snow shoes. Most boarders prefer to carry their board in a rucksack but they are quite heavy. Snow shoes are not as easy to get around on as skis. They sink further into the snow. If you are a nice skier you will make nice tracks for your boarding buddies to use - fairly steep. You also need good technique on snowshoes which is an art in itself. ISE who posts here sometimes is training to be a snowshoe guide and could probably tell us lots.
I try not to ruin a good day out on snowshoes by lugging a snowboard along though
You can sink a bit with snow shoes on, but if you’re breaking trail on skinny touring skis you get the same problem to a degree compared to the fat skis we’re all on nowadays. Something like the MSR Denali Evo snowshoe gets around this by having the option to add extra flotation tails available between 24 and 34 cm. Depends where you want to go though, there are places I can get on skis where snowshoes wouldn’t work well, rock hard icey on traverses for example although when bravado gives way to common sense I prefer crampons. Using snowshoes somedays you might need to use crampons sooner, but it’s a lot of gear to carry. Most snowshoes have a crampon arrangement on them and I can front-point over a small section using an axe for security personally but I’m a climber as well so I have the knack of that which some people wouldn’t.
Another snowshoe like the MSR Lightning will hang in longer on ice but there’s alway going to be a limit and you can’t stick float tails on them..
I’ve been out with people using short skis with board bindings on them. I know the last time though she was stepping out the binding although I can’t recall how. You can find their stuff here :
http://www.stc-swiss.ch/
There’s a lot of places snow shoes are way better than skis though, moving through forests or sections where there’s no snow cover you can clatter straight over instead over messing around like you do in skis, and show shoes hold way better on flat ice where the ski edge doesn’t help too much.