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PrintA Lesson In Wild
Guided snowshoe hike provides an opportunity to unplug and tune in.
Snowshoers begin their excursion into the forest near Moose during a ranger-guided tour in Grand Teton National Park.
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When I signed up for a ranger-led snowshoe hike in Grand Teton National Park, I knew the fresh air and scenery would be invigorating. But I didn’t anticipate the welcome escape it would offer from technology overload. My first clue came when Aimee Hanna, a park interpretive ranger, suggested leaving our modern snowshoes behind.
“We like to preserve the historic experience,” she said, as she brought out the recommended footwear: four-foot-tall wooden, lace-up snowshoes. We learned that these racquet-style snowshoes with long tails are painstakingly repaired each season by park staff, who soak rawhide strips in water until the strips are as limber as noodles and can be strung where needed and tied in knots.
Their size is intimidating, and even more so for one of my young companions. “They look as tall as me,” says Isabelle, my twelve-year-old niece.
I invited Isabelle, seven-year-old Quinn, and their parents, Heidi and Jason, all visiting from Boulder, Colorado, to join me on the park snowshoe outing. Every winter, from December through March, Grand Teton regularly offers these ranger-led snowshoe hikes. It’s a tour I’d long wanted to take but had never made time for until now—a warm February day when the two-hour hike seemed like an ideal way to show my family around the national park.
Having called in advance to make reservations, we join a handful of other families, about twenty people in all, from California, New York, Wyoming, and Colorado, in the lobby of the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor Center in Moose. Here, Hanna gives us a quick orientation before handing out snowshoes, which about half the group will strap on for the first time.
