Once again this year, at the start of the traditional spring break winter sports week, the four pairs of snowshoes will join the cross-country skis and skates in the trunk of the car. And this year again, in the snowier lands that stretch to the north of the St. Lawrence, somewhere near the Pays de Portneuf, the little family, to top off the good day of cross-country skiing that softens their legs, goes put on your snowshoes for a walk in the woods already darkened by the approach of dusk.
And like all the small families who practice this activity in a network of paths marked out by the SEPAQ, she will move, with flat and vaguely rectangular objects attached to her feet, along a corridor of hard-packed snow like cement. It’s like walking on dry land with flippers…
If by chance they then come across other walkers walking easily on the same paths, wearing simple crampons, or even “bare boots”, the little family is very likely to ask themselves the question which perhaps does not kill, but which could, in the long run, seriously threaten the Nordic snowshoeing industry in southern Quebec: so, do I really need snowshoes?
Usually, this is the moment that the father chooses to bathe his offspring with the story of his glorious exploits dating from the time when, shod in his big bear paws in sinew and his moosehide moccasins , he roamed the forests of Abitibi in two meters of soft snow. We even saw him, on these large birch frames without tails, crossing a whole lake of beavers in the powder snow while running… backwards! That, my friends, was snowshoeing.
What we designate today by this name most often comes down to encumbering ourselves with appendages as expensive as they are useless to survey a path groomed by the repeated passage of the many users who have preceded you and will always precede you everywhere, because where are the snows of yesteryear?
Let’s not be afraid of words: there is a racket racket. Try telling the salesman, who would like to see you pay $200 for these narrow little things, that you are wondering about their effectiveness as bearing surfaces in deep snow and that, in any case, in Estrie at least , where land privatization is the rule, unless you can afford your own forest, you are doomed to snowshoe on the beaten paths of protected areas and national parks. When you don’t have the chance to live in the suburbs of Sept-Îles or Baie-Comeau, off-piste, you better forget about it.
Yes, he will answer you, but these snowshoes, you see, are provided with teeth, so useful in the climbs… However, all it takes is a set of metal crampons at $30 to invalidate this objection. In the pandemic-boosted outdoor megabusiness, where the click of the credit card is a dopamine generator like any other, snowshoes aren’t the only ones with teeth.
Two weeks ago, walking in boots and crampons on a trail in Orford Park, I watched the trails of snowshoers who, here and there, left the beaten track and deviated from it, the time to plow a few meters of snow virgin before getting back on the right track, and I understood them. The Aboriginals of North America did not invent this mode of travel to walk in already trampled tracks, but to conquer a magical universe of immaculate cotton wool. And the Orford snowshoer is no more than the shadow of the son of a superhuman race, as fallen as can be, compared to the dream of Henry Ford, the motorist stuck in traffic.
Allowing off-piste snowshoeing on such a cramped territory, chronically besieged by an overpopulation of city dwellers in need of a playing field, is obviously unthinkable. Besides, the crowd crowding with fresh snow is no problem when the opportunity to show off his quadriceps molded in Lycra takes precedence over the search for tranquility.
In a discussion heard recently on the radio, the main concern that seemed to be raised by the current expansion project for this park was the lack of a network in the targeted area. Even in the furthest hemlock grove, there is no longer any refuge from the obsession with security. Do you hear a coyote howling? You call the police.
And if you live in the Laurentians, you can even see a Canadian lynx ringing in your backyard. General emotion. The lady of the “Hameaux du Boisé” fears for the life of her doggie! Response of the mayor of Saint-Hippolyte to this characterized invasion of a municipal domain: “We will have to hear the responses of the authorities to find out what is happening with him. »
I’m here, Mr. Mayor. First, forget the superstitions of our grandmothers: it’s not true that lynxes drop from a low branch on a human’s back to sever his carotid artery and bleed him like a chicken. At least, no one is known to have died this way since 1534. The cars passing by your house are much more dangerous.
That said, at a time when unplugging a TV broadcast service is likely to cause trauma severe enough to warrant the intervention of a shrink, and where a simple written note about inclusive language can be described as a “gesture superviolent”, it is certain that a lynx in Saint-Hippolyte is the beast of Gévaudan.
While cross-country skiing in a northern spruce forest, you might see the tracks of this big cat. Notice the way he walks, like all felines, with his claws drawn in. Far from social networks.