Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Snowshoe problem

For all of you experts, I have a question regarding snowshoes. I use MSRs; my daughter uses Tubbs. We've had both pairs for 3 seasons now with no problems. Saturday, we went to Slushy Meadows from South Fork in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. Everything was fine until Poop Out Hill. From that point on, giant snowballs kept forming under the foot plate on my daughter's snowshoes. And I mean a good 5 inches in diameter of compact snow. We had to stop every few minutes for shoe maintenance. I switched with her and the same thing happened to me. Needless to say, it made for slow going. I ended up taking them off coming back (lots of postholing)until the hill above Horse Meadows when I put them back on, and poof! they were fine again. The snow was wetter between Poop Out Hill and Slushy Meadows, which I'm assuming was a factor, and from Poop Out Hill, we basically followed one ski track, so there was no packed trail. Have any of you had similar problems and is there an easy fix?

Kandy-
I think it has alot to do with the consistency of the snow, but the Tubbs design does not seen to work as well as the MSR's IMHO. Our friend Sally rented Tubbs to go tramshoeing with my fiance, myself, and TracieB on San J last year. We have MSR Denali Evo Ascents and Tracie has MSR Lightning Ascents. The three of us had no problems, but Sally had major problems the Tubbs...at times, the snow under the shoes made it look like she was walking on softballs.

Stacy

I've also experienced the same issue. I own MSRs, no problem ever with snowballs, while my friend used Tubbs on one trip, big snowballs. A guy at a rental shop where my friend got the Tubbs said it had something to do with the coating on the metal of the Tubbs (or was it coating on the MSRs?), but that's just gossip, so who knows.

I haven't tried this, but I've heard this suggestion several times: Spray the metal parts of the shoe with a light coating of non-stick cooking spray. Might be worth a try.

Cool, I'll add PAM to my checklist for our next hike!!!

Stacy

A hard ski wax might work longer than oil.. I've thought about PAM but figured it would rub off quickly so never tried it. I tried spraying a high gloss Krylon paint on the cleat but it flaked off pretty quickly.

I've only had the snow pile up under the shoes a couple of times and it is VERY irksome.