If the shoe fits

Working on President’s Day was preferable to taking the day off given Tuesday’s looming production deadlines. Instead, a Friday would afford daylight hours to explore a recreational trail in another aspect.

2m icicle not for scale

Alpine skiing and ski touring long have been my favored outdoor activities in cold seasons. A pair of Tubbs brand snowshoes I acquired from the second-hand section of a sporting goods shop a couple decades ago have seen infrequent use. Consequently, the snowshoes are in considerably better condition than my skiing equipment, all of which is currently in some state of disrepair.

A winter hike required careful planning to fit in the window of time my spouse worked and my child attended school. The weather forecast was favorable, predicting temperatures just below freezing on Friday and higher temperatures with possible rain/snow by the following Monday, indicating that some of this season’s peak snow conditions in the area were to be found that weekend.

Trial runs across the hundred meters from the back door of the house we rent to the sidewalks the city clears of snow were wise. All the pitfalls of securing a boot improperly became familiar once more, such as falling into a snow-pit of one’s own making while fiddling around with a strap that simply will not cooperate.

That Friday was cloudless and cold as forecast. Work meetings consumed the morning. Two or three vehicles were parked at the Ogemaw Hills Pathway trailhead shortly after 1 p.m. I glanced briefly at the map before setting out with only a vague notion of destination and an intention to be out and back in an hour.

Variety and abundance of choice are snowshoeing’s biggest charms. Trail etiquette demands those creating big Sasquatch footprints in the forest establish alternate paths off to the sides of the parallel tracks that run down the center of the groomed main trails—the exclusive domain of the skiers.

There at the margins of the groomed trail, choices present themselves: to swoop wide around a tree, or cut a corner some ways ahead, with zig-zagging patterns that flow around stumps and hollows.

Some of these B-trails meander far from mapped pathways, which remain out of sight for so long as to cause a person misgivings. For anyone who has broken new trail and strayed a bit too far afield knows that not every snowshoe path is guaranteed to reconnect a traveler with a main artery.^*

Just so, upon encountering a snowshoe-only path running perpendicular to the main path and presenting a crossroads, I struck off to the south. Before long the path spilled out onto Clear Lake Road. I picked another northbound Pathway trail up farther to the west before wending west by northwest on a snowshoe B-trail from signpost #2 all the way back to the trailhead parking lot and my trusty Subaru.

Having covered a little over 2 kilometers (1.3 miles) in just under an hour, I considered the outing a complete success. I had such a fine time, fixing up those skis may take an extra season.

* An imaginitive mind might even conjure something macabre waiting somewhere up ahead.