Origins and history

ORIGINS AND HISTORY

                                         

Snowshoes have an origin that is lost in the mists of time, they are also called ciastre in the South-Western Alps (ciastros, in the Occitan valleys); or ciaspole from the Ladin Val di Non in the Eastern Alps where a very popular competition has been organised since the early 1970s: La Ciaspolada. It is likely that primitive tools, perhaps somewhere between skiing and today's snowshoes, were used by the peoples of Central Asia, Mongolia and Siberia to migrate across the Bering Strait to the American continent. In Europe, the Nordic peoples also certainly used tools that allowed them to move across the snowy terrain, as evidenced by rock carvings found in Norway and dating back some 2,500 years, but over the centuries they developed a more comfortable and faster tool that allowed them to slide on the snow: the ski. It would appear that no evidence has been found in the Alps to prove the use of this tool in ancient times, even though man was already present there on a semi-permanent basis as early as the Late Neolithic period, as evidenced by the discovery of human settlements in the Aisone caves dating from approximately 4800 to 3500 BC. Even in more recent times, there are no writings or drawings concerning snowshoes, even though the Alpine passes were also frequented in winter by soldiers, pilgrims, traders and smugglers. Snowshoes were probably introduced to the Western Alps, if not materially then culturally, by adapting them to the Alpine topography, by French settlers who had returned home from the Canadian territories where they had learned about their use from the indigenous tribes. Snowshoes have also been part of the equipment of various armies for a couple of centuries, including the Italian army, which used them extensively during the First World War, supplying them to the Alpine Corps.

Designed to enable people to move without sinking into the snow, the snowshoe, despite its various forms, was for thousands of years made up of a wooden frame moulded into an oval shape and joined by a weave of vegetable or animal ropes, which allowed it to float and be attached to footwear. The similarity with the ancient rackets used in the game of shuttlecock, the ancestor of tennis, meant that the name 'snowshoe' probably derived from this similarity.

Starting in the 1990s, snowshoes became more and more a recreational tool, and from a handmade product they moved on to large-scale production with the use of new materials such as aluminium and plastic, and numerous improvements were made, such as the adoption of ski mountaineering-style bindings that allow the heel to be fixed or free, and crampons for better grip on frozen surfaces. Currently, the market offers a wide range of models and prices, from those for those taking their first steps on the snow to those for competitions or more demanding treks, giving anyone the chance to immerse themselves, with the necessary precautions and knowledge, in the enchanted environment that is the snowy mountain.