I did bunch of internet searching an came up with this design for a “human powered groomer” to be pulled by someone on snowshoes. The straps go to a waist harness and a sand bag or a couple of cinder blocks go in the pan to help pack and even out the snow even more than the snowshoes. I tried it out in my yard, it works pretty well and it isn’t much extra effort to use. One pass turned out like many people had snowshoed on it.
It’s hard to get a good shot of the result in the light conditions.
Thanks @Pepperjester, best thing is it cost me nothing to build. I had all the materials just laying around the house. It grooms a path 21" wide. The bit of testing I did today was promising, it seems that more weight is needed in crusty snow to really break it up, but a 22kg sand bag worked pretty well. Hopefully I’ll get to try it out on the trails this week. @adam?
@jmacdonald I’ll try for a video soon. The picture doesn’t really show the nice ski hill corduroy that it produces.
Even with 22kg on it it’s isn’t much for one person to pull. I don’t think the complexity of hitching up 2 people would really be worth it and tighter turns would be difficult.
I’m sure a good dog could pull it but in deep snow a dog might just posthole and this won’t fill in deep holes, it relies on the snowshoes to break the initial trail and do some pre-acking of the snow then it smooths out the snowshoe tracks and packs the trail even more.
Did I mention that I don’t even like snowshoeing, it’s too much like walking for my taste. I’ll pull this thing so I don’t have to snowshoe as much to get a rideable trail sooner.
Never got why so many cyclists snowshoe, but wouldn’t be caught dead walking or running anywhere! I enjoy snowshoeing, but then, I am probably a runner… XD
We managed to get the groomer out for a run today at Irishman’s Rd. The snow conditions were really wet, not ideal for grooming but after some weight adjustment it ran pretty well. In the woods were the snow was drier I wish it had more weight to do a nice job. The trail has had some traffic and the track is a bit narrow in spots to be really effective, so we tried to snowshoe the track wider as we went. Overall I’m pretty happy with the job it does. Next winter I’ll bust this thing out right away after the first snow to establish the trail and keep it packed.
Looks like they’re doing the grooming thing right in Oromocto, NB. Snowmobile pulling a groomer. Of course that only works if the trails aren’t too narrow or twisty.
