Snowshoeing After Nemo

Feetsies and Polesies

Helenator

Always wrap it up

About a month ago Helen and I signed up for the L.L. Bean starlight snowshoe.  This three hour course teaches you the basics of snowshoeing as well as general cold weather survival tips.  There's a few tricks to dressing in winter weather that you have to remember: First, you should never use cotton as a baselayer or top layer, and its use is generally discouraged.  Cotton can't retain heat once it gets wet, and it stays wet for a long time.  In contrast, wool and synthetic fibers are hydrophilic and actively move water out.  (Thus begat the buzzword 'wicking' for all thermal underwear technology.)    Second, you should have a way to quickly add and remove layers as you work harder.  The goal of winter exercise is to never sweat.  Translation: everything you buy should have a zipper if you don't want to die.  

Anyway, we learned all that, and we learned how to snowshoe.  We liked it well enough that once Nemo hit, we went to Walmart and got the gear to do it on our own.  Note that we didn't love it, or we would have gotten the $200 dollar a person gear at LL.Bean right after the fact.  We spent about half that to get geared up at Wally World.

Crazy Snow Formation

Our HUGE Tracks

Another one bites the dust

Because we are entirely noobs and we live in a secluded rural area, we just walked around outside our house.  The wind during Nemo was so extreme that many parts of the ground were bare, while other snow drifts were likely deeper than six feet.  It was very hard to tell depth and what lay beneath the snow as we walked around, we could well have walked over dangerous stuff liked rusted wires and glass.    We worked our way through the old sawmill and approached the large body of water beyond it.  I think it might be the Kennebunk river or the Old Mill Pond, but I can't find a way to get a name for it from google.  I should ask a local.  Another thing that happened was preordained by our guide from LL Bean many moons before: Helen fell down.   I was following her when I believe her shoe hit a rock or got trapped by a rock or something, anyway, she sort of crumples so slowly that I said: "Was that a joke for my benefit?" and she sort of sigh-yelled "NO I FELL" at me.  I still think she might have done it on purpose.
While we were out in the woods I made some panoramas.  One of them uses Photosynth which is a Microsoft online product.  I'm not sure how I feel about it yet.   Actually, the others use Microsoft Research's ICE product also, so its all Microsoft all the way, baby.

 In conclusion, snow shoeing is a great form of exercise, it can be damn aerobic. Check it out next time you get three feet of snow, fellows.

Blizzard Nemo's fingerprint