On the crest of Blue Mountain in Bethel Township near the Schuylkill County line, about a dozen people met Saturday afternoon for a hike in the snow.
Not everyone brought snowshoes, but the Berks County Parks & Recreation staff had their backs. It was planned that way.
Members of the group had signed up for what was billed as an “out-and-back snowshoe adventure on the Appalachian Trail.”
Most of the adventurers, including Jenny Long of Hamburg, registered for the free program because they wanted to test out snowshoeing as a recreational activity.
“I’ve been wanting to do it, and when they offered it here (in northern Berks) it was a good opportunity,” she said.
Long, who works as a court reporter, said she was looking for a wintertime recreation activity. Saturday’s introductory program was a way to try out snowshoeing before deciding whether to invest in equipment.
Snowshoeing interests her because it provides a reason to go to parks or on trails and be surrounded by nature when there’s snow on the ground.
“We’re kind of lucky it just snowed,” she said.
Saturday’s snowstorm added depth to the base established by the snowstorm earlier in the week.
There has to be at least 4 inches of snow for snowshoes, Lisa Gauker, events coordinator with the county parks and recreation department, told the group before they set out on a short hike from the AT Trailhead off Route 501.
“The more snow the better,” she said.
Snowshoes help a person traverse snow without sinking. That’s because the body weight is distributed over a larger area than the sole of a regular shoe or boot, Gauker explained.
Even though the shoes make it easier, walking in snowshoes is still taxing, making it a good form of exercise, she said.
The reason the parks and recreation department took its snowshoeing program up to Bethel wasn’t because there was a better chance of snow up on the mountain.
Blue Mountain Eagle Climbing Club helps maintain that section of the AT and has some in-house expertise with snowshoeing.
“This was just a good option instead of snowshoeing in our parks,” Gauker said.
A recreation grant covered the cost of the department’s purchase of snowshoes.
Adaiah Bauer lives on the mountain in Bethel and is one of the caretakers with Blue Mountain hiking club of the AT’s Route 501 shelter. She has extensive snowshoeing experience, having been a member of the snowshoe racing throughout her college years in the Adirondack Mountain region of New York.
“Because I get to live out here I get to snowshoe and cross country ski,” she said.
That is, if there’s snow.
In the three years she’s lived there, that has been the exception rather than the rule.
“This is the first time in three winters here that I’ve been able to cross-country ski and snowshoe,” she said.
Bauer said her racing snowshoes are shorter and lighter than the standard snowshoes. As the name implies, she literally goes on runs in them.
After Gauker gave instructions on how to put on the shoes, Bauer led the novices, who were mostly middle-aged or older, single-file down the narrow, snow-packed path, stopping along the way to share some of the history of snowshoeing.
Holding an antiquated snowshoe for the hikers to see, Bauer it is believed that snowshoes were used from the beginning of recorded history.
“About 4,000 to 6,000 years ago snowshoes appeared,” Bauer said, explaining that the design evolved from the shape of skies to a more rounded shape resembling a tennis racket.
Source: Berkshire mont
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