Mountaineering
Snowshoe

I designed and built a functional prototype for an innovative snowshoes. These snowshoes have an integrated crampons that can quickly be connected/disconnected from the snowshoes. This allows the user to quickly and easily switch between snowshoes and crampons. The snowshoes also have a 3-way heel bar that will aid in uphill, downhill and level terrain. This snowshoe also has the added benefit of not having to bring both crampons and snowshoes with you, which means less weight to carry on your back.

History

The idea came to me when I started ice climbing. On the approach to some of these climbs that required snowshoes I had to carry my crampons in my pack. I wanted to save weight on the approach to the climb, so I thought about having the crampons integrated into a snowshoe. I wanted to be able to quickly connect and disconnect them from my snowshoes. I thought about how I could build this snowshoe and figured out a plan to make a functional proof of concept. I bought a pair snowshoes, spring-loaded indexing pins and other hardware and assembled the snowshoe.
I used these snowshoes when I went Ice climbing and they worked very well. I decided to design a new snowshoe from the ground up taking advantage of this new feature.

CAD Design

  • Designed in Autodesk Fusion 360

  • Started with basic design of a snowshoe

  • Designed crampons that will integrate into snowshoe

  • Added the spring loaded pin assembly to the design

  • Finally I added the heel bar assembly

How It's Made

  • All plastic parts were 3D printed

  • The snowshoe deck was 3D printed with a custom 3D printer that was modified to print objects up to 2 feet in length

  • The sheet metal parts were cut using a metal cutting service such as Send Cut Send and OSHCut

  • The Sheet metal was formed with 3D printed tooling and a word working vise

  • Then heated treated to 1600 Fahrenheit using a heat treat oven I built

  • All the parts were assembled to make the mountaineering snowshoe

Contact

Feel free to contact me if your interested in my services. You can email me at [email protected].