Description

What’s Included:

Our snowshoe weaving kits include all of the supplies and instructions necessary to weave your own pair of traditional snowshoes with modern fishline weave:

• High quality hardwood frames of the size and style selected – finished with exterior spar varnish;
• All the monoline necessary to complete the weave;
• 2 x high-quality, padded spring clamps;
• Aluminum cable crimps to join sections of line;
• Gil Gilpatrick‘s exceptional book “Building Wooden Snowshoes & Snowshoe Furniture”;
• Deerhide lacing to wrap heels (only on bear paw snowshoes);
• Lacing needle for deerhide wrap (only on bear paws);

You Supply:

• Hammer (ball-peen preferred);
• Leather gloves;
• Pliers and cable cutters.

About our Snowshoes:

Modern mountaineering snowshoes are great for hard-packed trails, but in soft snow, and particularly when pulling a toboggan, traditional snowshoe shapes and sizes really shine. After years of experience and hundreds of kilometres of testing we’ve settled upon a marriage of traditional snowshoes frames and modern weaving materials.  The 400-lb monoline fishing line we use is lighter, stronger and more abrasion resistant than traditional rawhide. It also needs no varnish, and is much less likely to stick to wet snow.  Quite simply it performs better and lasts longer than rawhide across a much wider range of conditions (and doesn’t require annual maintenance).  Frames are high quality hardwood.  Rugged and lightweight, these are the best snowshoes we’ve found for wilderness travel away from packed trails.

Selecting a Style:

Bear paw snowshoes are great for travel in thick brush or around camp, but do not perform as well as Huron style snowshoes in wide-open areas (lakes and rivers).  We use Huron shoes to travel in, and switch to Bear Paws around camp. Find out more here.

Bindings: 

Traditional snowshoes do not include bindings.  We sell different styles of bindings to accommodate different footwear, and a large variety may be available through local sporting stores.  See our Binding Selection Guide here.