The dream: Two feet of snow falls in the mountains. You snowshoe to your favorite spot under clear skies. The powder glistens and the silence is deafening. No one is around for miles and miles.
The reality: Holy crumbs breaking trail is hard. You don't get as far as you'd hoped and you're wrecked for days after.
So... how do you reconcile reality with fantasy?
Tip #1: Bring a buddy. Or two. Or three. Or four. When you snowshoe with someone else you can trade off the trail breaking work. It's kind of like riding in a peloton. Everybody gets a turn up front before rotating to the back. Besides, you really shouldn't be snowshoeing by yourself anyway.
Tip #2: Wait a couple of hours so a few others break the trail. I'm terrible at this. We tend to start before daybreak and not many people are crazy enough to get out earlier than us. But if you can get just a couple of people ahead of you it will become much easier. And if you catch them you can make friends and join their team to share in the trail breaking duty.
Tip #3: Wait a week and hope nobody goes where you want to go. Snow settles and gets consolidated. If you're lucky or your route is obscure, you might still get to claim "firsts" without having to break trail through two feet of new snow. Beware fickle mountain weather. You might not get to go out at all.
Tip #4: Reroute to take advantage of established trails and ski runs (being careful to not ruin the grooming and not be in the way) and then dive off into the deep snow when you're much closer. There's lots of space out there and most everyone else will stick to the packed trail. Be judicious in where you diverge from the trench. Don't ruin an untouched meadow when you can stick to the trees.
Tip #5: Get stronger. Well, maybe not. This definitely hasn't worked for me, but maybe you're a young whippersnapper and you can focus on leg day. (If so, would you like to go snowshoeing with me and break trail?)
This time it was just two of us and the dog. We did follow an established trail for a portion of the route and hopped the shoulders of groomed trails where we could, but in the end it was a struggle and we stopped short of our destination at a sketchy creek crossing. The way back was much, much easier even though it was just our own tracks.
The only one of us that was unaffected was Tinkham. At just a year and a half, she's still young enough to run for five hours and then want to play fetch when we got home. Perhaps Tip #6 would be to fit your dog with snowshoes so they can break trail. Of course, we'd wind up following her in circles and making detours to whatever smelled good under the snow, but that would be a small price to pay.
