Snowshoeing

Here's something that you may not know about Canadians: Most of us have never been snowshoeing. That's right, even with all that snow that we have up there, I've never strapped myself into some old tennis rackets and gone romping around in it. Frankly, I'm not really one for winter sports at all (skiing terrifies me), but when my SO started snowshoeing this winter I had to go at least once to see if this is a winter activity I can get behind.

The local bike store where we get our stuff is also a hub for lots of local sporting activities, including a weekly snowshoe outing. Glenn at Swan Cycles has a whole bunch of spare snowshoes which he nicely loans out to people who want to come hiking around with him in the forest near his house. Here's me, trying to strap myself in. Glenn did up the first shoe for me. His stayed laced up the whole trip, whereas mine started flopping apart about halfway through.

The walk we took was really pretty, though some fields and then eventually down into a (mostly) frozen riverbed, and we walked right along the river for a little bit. We crashed through the ice a couple of times, so I had some rather wet ankles by the time we climbed out of the riverbed and made it back up to the field.

That's me being a pest and interrupting my SO's lovely photography. He really likes taking pictures like this ("a single silo, in a desolate snow covered landscape..."), but I think the picture looks a lot better with me in it. My SO has posted some more pics, along with a fancy interactive map thing with geotagged photos. Nerdly, I know :)

All in all, I'm glad that I went, but I think I'll be sticking to monday night yoga instead. Not only do I have a big bruise on my thigh from tripping after getting getting a stick stuck in my shoe, but I have massive blisters from the aggressively paced tromping. These guys treat this as exercise, not just a nice afternoon walk through the fields. Unfortunately, the Biketopus is not built to hike fast even in normal shoes, let alone with big floppy things attached to her feet. I definitely would go again in a slightly more relaxed setting, though, because it was cool to be able to hike through the snowy scenery without being stuck in snowdrifts.

PS -- I hit 900 miles today of indoor biking! Only 100 miles to go until spring!