For The Small Foot Finding Showshoes For Children Can Be Quite A Challenge

According to the Chinese calendar, this is the Year of the Ox. But for outdoor recreationalists, this may be the Year of the Snowshoe.

The other day I opened my mail and found a catalog for an outdoor retailer. The cover? Three adults running on snowshoes through the woods.

Just about then, the meter reader stomped up to my house wearing snowshoes to ride over the hip-deep powder.

For Christmas, my in-laws gave each other snowshoes. Everyone is doing it.

I tried snowshoes as a teenager. But those handcrafted wood-and-rawhide stompers worked better as wall accessories in a mountain cabin than as sports equipment. Humbled and sore, I gave up snowshoeing until this winter, when the kids decided that what their grandparents were doing on the sleek and bright toys looked fun.

Fortunately for our family, most sporting goods stores now rent and sell snowshoes. Unfortunately, we found a dizzying number of different brands, shapes, sizes and prices from $40 to $400!

While my husband and I seized upon mid-priced snowshoes, the challenge came in finding models for our children, ages 6 and 3. We found that most pint-size snowshoes are designed for youngsters weighing over 60 pounds. That eliminates both of our children.

However, one company - Spring Brook Mfg., based in Colorado - has introduced Cubs snowshoes to their line of Little Bears.

Weighing in at less than one pound per shoe, including the binding, the Cubs were by far the easiest for our children to use, and the easiest for us to attach to their winter boots.

And at $40 a pair, they also were the easiest to justify. Most other kids’ models start at $80, weigh twice as much, measure significantly larger, and are secured with overly complicated bindings.

The Cubs’ simple, rigid-plastic design affords youngsters stability and flexibility. My 3-year-old quickly learned he could walk, run, turn and even go backward on the Cubs.

Both kids could sled down a hill and snowshoe back up without ever removing the shoes. And best of all, by afternoon their exhaustion helped the kids nap long enough for Mom to write about snowshoes!

When looking for kids’ gear, assume the snowshoes will be treated like toys, so they must be durable. (The Cubs survived the ultimate test: Mom backing over them in the garage! No damage.) > If the Cubs have one downfall, it’s that they don’t look high-tech or romantic like their counterparts from Tubbs, Atlas, Red Feather, Wilcox or Faber Safesport. These companies offer a variety of kids’ and adults’ snowshoes ranging from $80 to $400.

For techno-outdoors people, Tubbs offers an $85 Sasquatch model that measures 6-1/2 inches by 17-1/2 and weighs 1.6 pounds per pair. Tubbs may be the next step up for youngsters above 8 years and 70-plus pounds. They look and feel high-tech, and work well for bigger kids.

The main difference between the Sasquatch and the Cubs is size, and the Sasquatch binding that allows the toe to dig into hillsides.

While 1997 may be the Year of the Snowshoe, they’ve been around for centuries. According to Faber Safesport’s Reference Guide to Snowshoeing, archaeologists have evidence that foot extenders were in use about 4000 B.C. in Central Asia. Some theorize that Asians used snowshoes to cross the Bering Straits.

North American Indians developed the modern (and now nostalgic) snowshoe, that wood-and-rawhide contraption I tried as a youth. The French used snowshoes in the 1600s to explore the St. Lawrence River area, then turned the rest of the world on to snowshoeing.

Now, after 6,000 years, it’s nice someone has finally developed snowshoes that are not only efficient, but kid-friendly, too.