You, too, can shoe

In the Pikes Peak region, two seasons can exist at once. In early March, the crocuses are nuzzling up through dead leaves in Colorado Springs. Warm days seem to cry for a long hike, but the snowpack is at its deepest point of the year.

It's the perfect time to strap on snowshoes.

Fans of the functional, funny-looking footwear say if you can hike, you can snowshoe. And if you can snowshoe, you can go almost anywhere hikers might go in summer.

The Pikes Peak region has several reliably snowy trails that are surprisingly easy to get to, considering how far away winter can feel in the city.

The snow was three feet deep near the Crags on the west side of Pikes Peak recently when a group of snowshoers, led by Colorado Mountain Club trip leader Bill Brown, tramped single file into the woods.

"It'd be pretty much impossible to do this without the shoes," he said. "We'd be sinking in over our knees with every step."

Instead, the weight-spreading shoes let the hikers float atop a foot of fluffy powder.

Somewhere under the snow lay an old logging road, but winter had hidden any sign of it, so the group broke its own trail, silently shuffling through the untracked white.

As he walked, Brown described why he introduces dozens of newcomers a year to snowshoeing.

"It only takes a few minutes to get the hang of it," he said. "I tell people skis are like the sports car of winter travel - faster, but more limited. Snowshoes are the SUV. You can go anywhere with these."

The mix of ease and versatility, plus a low price tag compared with skiing, give this sport a huge following. There are almost 1.5 million snowshoers in the United States, according to the Snowsports Industry Association.

Brown's group included a first-timer and a few die-hard hikers.

"Winter is a wonderful time to be out," said Eric Swab, who hits the trails about once a week, year-round. "Trails that are crowded in summer you have all to yourself. Also, you can go off trail and there is no impact because the snow covers everything."

Snowshoes share a common ancestor with skis. Both came from rough wooden planks that for thousands of years were used by hunters to navigate the wintery reaches of Europe and Asia. In fact, the first skis Scandinavian miners brought to Colorado were called snowshoes and were used more for getting around than sliding downhill.

A lot has changed since then. It's not just that the image of old wood and rawhide shoes is out of date. Even modern aluminum and plastic versions are constantly updated with stronger, simpler bindings, titanium frames, genderspecific shapes that match men's and women's strides, and even climbing bales to make trudging uphill easier.

The main draw for local snowshoers is clear: Colorado's sunny weather often makes winter hiking a joy, but it's no fun if you're mired up to your hips with snow pouring into your boots. Snowshoeing allows you to hike across deep snow, and compared with backcountry skiing, which can take years to master, it's easy.

The group wound its way over a snowy pass to a waterfall hung with aqua-colored icicles. The hikers took turns jumping off a low eave of the falls into the chest-deep powder below.

At a sunny spot with a few old stumps sticking above the snow like stools, they stopped for lunch.

Cindy Amoruso, a dance teacher at Wasson High School, sat and munched a sandwich. She moved to Colorado from Chicago last fall, and this was her first time snowshoeing.

"It really isn't that hard," she said. "I sink in a little more than I thought I would, but I went hiking in the snow a few weeks ago in just boots. That was really rough. This I could get into."

Skiers - even cross-country skiers - often dismiss snowshoeing as being so easy that it's dull. Tramping along on metal snowshoe claws lacks the graceful glide of skis.

On the other hand, snowshoes are light, easy to throw on a backpack in the patchy conditions Pikes Peak often harbors, and after lunch, the group proved that snowshoes can be fun, too.

Dan Anderson, a local hiking fanatic, picked a particularly steep, powdery hill to "ski" down.

"Watch out for stumps or you'll face plant," he said. Then he, Brown, Swab and the others loped down the hill, sliding in a sort of half ski, half shuffle that left smiles on all their faces.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or dave.philipps@gazette.com