Snow Skills

Posthole is winter hiking slang for stepping into snow that isn’t dense or strong enough to support your weight. Your foot will drive down into the snow, making it hard to remove your embedded foot from the snow cover and leaving behind a deep, distinct footprint in the snow. What happened there was that your weight was greater than the support of the snow and your foot drove downward, stopping only when the snow compacted to the point where it held you.

While a posthole may mean wet and cold ankles to you, that footprint can be a safety issue to those who hike a trail after you. The packing down of a hiking trail after a snowfall is an important task for all that will follow. Even with successive snowfalls, a packed-out trail will be easier and more stable throughout the winter than the uncompressed areas around it.

The best technique to follow is to put on snowshoes if your feet compress the snow enough for it to be over your toes. Using snowshoes in this situation is more than trail etiquette; creating postholes in the snow can be very dangerous for the next hiker to come along the trail. Postholes can become filled with snow and represent a potential ankle injury if a hiker steps off compacted snow into a hidden posthole.