Snow pounds the mountainside as our car climbs up the twisting road into Big Cottonwood Canyon. Braving the treacherous drive alongside us are our fellow snow aficionados, whose cars were packed with skis, ski poles, or snowboards. Unlike our comrades, however, we aren’t heading for the slopes, and our car contains a different sort of gear entirely — two sets of snowshoes.
Typically, I’m not one to be found up in the mountains when the snow starts to fly, but snowshoeing appealed to me in a way that sliding downhill at 25 miles per hour did not. It seemed so simple — you’re just taking a hike up the mountain in the snow, right? It only takes me the first few steps on solid ground after strapping the snowshoes to my feet to realize how wrong that assumption was.
My guide, Ali Sadler, laughingly suggests that I walk around the car a few times to get my bearings while she prepared her own shoes. I felt like a fish trying to wobble around in the snow, my feet strapped into the wide, paddle-like shoes that kicked up snow when I didn’t place my feet properly. I took a try at climbing into the actual snowbank that guarded the Dog Lake trailhead and promptly slid back to the ground. And I’d thought this was going to be a walk in the park — literally.
We start up the trail, and I quickly realize that walking in the snow while wearing snowshoes was vastly different than normal hiking. Snowshoes function by spreading a person’s weight evenly over the larger surface of the shoe, which prevents the foot from breaking through the layer of snow and falling through. The shape and strength of the shoe also enables the wearer to actually climb the hillsides, digging out footholds with the tip of the shoe and clambering up to higher ground. Sadler makes it look so simple, and she doesn’t seem phased by anything. As I struggle to pick up one foot and then the next, laughing, I ask her about the first time she ever showshoed and what that was like. Sadler gets this excited look in her eye and describes her first experience as “love at first sight.”
“When I grew up in Sugar House, the mountains seemed really far away,” Sadler says. “But when we moved to Millcreek, suddenly Millcreek Canyon was my backyard. I did a lot of hiking, but I never really had a winter sport. A friend of mine who lived in the neighborhood asked me if I wanted to go snowshoeing with her, and I did, and I just loved it.”
Sadler, who has been snowshoeing for five seasons now and teaching others how to snowshoe for three, says she likes to start beginners on easier trails so they can get the hang of things before advancing to tougher climbs. My experience is no different. After about half a mile, Sadler slides down into a ravine and gestures for me to follow. Once we are both stuck staring up at the steep hill, she sticks a shoe into the snow and begins to climb. It looks impossible, and would have been in normal shoes, but I am able to grip with the tips of my toes and the teeth of the shoe and scramble up back onto the trail, where Sadler and I exchange a triumphant high-five.
The trail begins to get easier — or I begin to get better — and as we continue upwards, Sadler tells me that Dog Lake is one of her favorites to snowshoe, though it’s a little further away from the U than some of the other trails.
“I love doing the Salt Lake overlook, which is a series of switchbacks,” Sadler says, telling me the story of one descent from that path in which she was able to slide all the way back to her starting point. “Church Fork is less known, which is great for a solitary, quiet day,” she says. Others she enjoys are paths up Big Cottonwood, Donut Falls, Lake Blanche, and the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, which is just to the east of the U’s dormitories and very easily accessible for students.
At this point, we’ve maneuvered fairly high up the trail, climbed up off of the trail to avoid some backcountry skiers using the trail as a run, and have reached the point where all noise ceases to exist. I don’t know how far up we were going, but I have to pause and look around in amazement. I have never seen the woods like this before, with the white snow falling softly all around me and absolute silence blanketing the scene. Sadler, who is watching me, sees the look of wonder come over my face and knows that snowshoeing, for me too, is love at first sight.
“It should be joyful,” Sadler tells me as we begin our descent. “You don’t have to get somewhere. Every step is beautiful.”