Snowshoes are an age old technique for snow travel. Modern designs are light with easy to use bindings, but at $100 per pair or more, it can be impractical to equip a Troop of fast growing Scouts with these modern marvels. Luckily, there are any number of practical plans to build snowshoes from readily available, inexpensive materials. Select the snowshoe building info you want from the following table;
The HAT OKPIK Course Manual includes a 'Snowshoe Making Workshop' section detailing one approach using EMT 'Thin Wall' metal tubing with a solid webbing laced to the EMT frame. Download the workshop instructions here:
Snowshoe Making Workshop Page 1 (PDF - 91KB)
Snowshoe Making Workshop Page 2 (PDF - 110KB)
Snowshoe Making Workshop Page 3 (PDF - 97KB)
Snowshoe Making Workshop Page 4 (PDF - 42KB)
This pair of showshoes was made using these instructions;
Troop 24 of Nevada City has been making EMT frame snowshoes for some years now. They use nylon cord to create a laced deck design that you can download here -
Download Troop 24's Lacing Detail (PDF)
A pair of Troop 24's completed snowshoes are shown here -
A number of designs are available online as well (check out the HAT's Favorite Links page!). Bent wood plans and kits are available from several sources. Check out HAT's account of this workshop where local youth make their own bent wood shoeshoes, and then take them snow camping!
Boy's Life has published several snowshoe designs over the years, though most are no longer available from the Boy's Life archives, you can download a couple of them here -
Download the 1986 Boy's Life Bent Wood Snowshoe Plans (PDF - 155KB)
Download the 1996 Boy's Life Wooden Snowshoe Plans (PDF - 167Kb)
Download the 1998 Boy's Life PVC Snowshoe Plans (PDF - 142Kb)
Let us know what other designs you use!
Bindings are always an issue. The simplest if often called a 'Lampwick Binding', named after the original material used for the binding.
Details of this binding ae also in the BSA OKPIK Manual available from your local Scout Shop. It takes about 7' of lamp wick (still available from online sources - see the HAT Favorites Links page), or you can substitute the nylon webbing that utility companies now use to pull cables and pipes through underground conduits at construction sites (they usually toss the stuff after 1 use).
Other bindings ideas are in the HAT OKPIK Course manual and on several of the web links on the HAT's Favorite Links page. You can download the binding discussion from the OKPIK manual here:
Do-It-Yourself Snowshoe Bindings (PDF - 91KB)
One additional idea worth considering are snowshoe crampons. Modern decked designs use toe and heel crampons on the bindings and decking to help prevent sliding. Classic raw hide laced shoes typically did not, relying instead on the rough lacing to dig into the snow. How well this actually worked is lost in history but one thing is for sure, you need some type of crampon is you build a decked design! I use a wood frame shoe with a sythetic lacing like this picture -
Even these lacings don't provide enough 'bite' for me so I've added a crampon under the ball of my foot made from some scrap aluminum. They work surprisingly well. These are also commercially available, but they're not cheap. I recommend that you make a set and try them out.
This page revised March 12, 2008