A book of winter sports; by Dier J. C

Author:Dier, J. C., [from old catalog] ed
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Winter sports
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan company
Published: 1912-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

can travel on bare ground, is a thing which only experience can bring. There are hitherto unsuspected muscles to be trained, which soon make their presence known by complainings "not loud but deep." You must learn by experiment just how tight to pull the thongs that secure the snow-shoes.

An ascent of a steep slope on snow-shoes is an arduous task. The smooth under surface of the snow-shoe has nothing to catch in the crust and give a purchase for the next step. Four times out of five it begins to slip as you throw your weight forward for the stride, and either slides back to where you were before or twists around sideways. Snow-shoes are intended, by the nature of their being, to move straight forward. When one of them has started off downhill at an angle of ninety degrees from the other, and when the footing of that other is none too stable, the task of bringing them once more into their proper relations is a complicated and delicate one. The snow-shoe must be coaxed, not treated violently ; a sudden twist may pull the foot from under the toe-strap. Then the shoe, which is still attached to the ankle by its thongs, gives a good imitation of the ball and chain of a convict. Untying frozen thongs and reinstating a foot in its snow-shoe with the thermometer at twenty degrees below zero is no pleasant task under the most favorable circumstances; but when you are perched on a slope like the roof of a house on a single snow-shoe which manifests an insane desire to slip backward to the foot of the incline, it is well-nigh impossible. But you soon get used to accomplishing the impossible. — Harold J. Rowland.

Copyright, 1905. Reprinted by permission of the Outlook Company.

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