All Content By: Claire Walter

A towering monument less than an hour’s drive west of Reno in California’s High Sierra is a landmark for drivers along Interstate 80. The crest of Donner Summit, one of the most snow-rich mountain passes in the West, is less than 10 miles farther west and roughly 1,000 feet higher.

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To borrow on old travelogue cliché, Alberta’s Banff National Park is study in contrast. Its 2,586 square miles comprise both wilderness and civilization. There are high mountains, deep valleys, endless forests and abundant wildlife. Even though much of it feels and looks remote, it is just 70 miles from Calgary – and the Trans-Canada Highway runs right through it. It contains one large town (Banff), one smaller town (Lake Louise Village), two palatial hotels (the Fairmont Banff Springs and Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise) and three significant downhill ski areas (Ski Lake Louise, Sunshine and Norquay). It is a park among parks, with Kootenay National Park just to the south, Yoho National Park to the west (and in another province) and Jasper National Park to the north. It is Canada’s oldest national park and also the one with phenomenal snowshoe opportunities.

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Anyone who has hung a pair of antique snowshoes over a fireplace can appreciate the artistry of classic wooden designs. The graceful bentwood and the intricate lacer's art are fine examples of form and function. But aesthetics are not generally why snowshoes are found in museum collections or special exhibitions. They usually appear as artifacts from by-gone eras in historical or cultural displays, or in paintings of historical events. To the casual museum-goer, they are just part if the show. For ardent snowshoers, however, looking for a snowshoe or two somewhere in a museum is like a scavenger hunt. It's a game I really have come to enjoy, searching for snowshoes in art and snowshoes in reality in museum of all sorts. Read full story

Snowshoeing is now the fastest-growing snowsport, and it wouldn't have happened without Gene and Bill Prater, who developed the first lightweight, metal-frame snowshoes. Read full story

Copyright © Claire Walter 2004. Tubbs aluminum-frame snowshoes are largely credited with the sport’s modern renaissance, but the Vermont company is also the keeping the flame of wooden snowshoe making—and Stowe, Vermont’s Joan Scribner-Lemieux is the one-woman fire tender. This mother of three, stepmother of seven, grandmother many times over and even a great-grandmother is New England’s last remaining snowshoe lacer. Read full story