Like anything, it started with small steps. But Marc Campbell knows his passion for snowshoeing and the growing sport of snowshoe racing has helped the burgeoning winter activity hit its stride. Campbell is the founder of the Yeti, Canada’s first snowshoe series offering race events and clinics that give people an opportunity to participate in the winter activity, and he’s quickly finding out there’s no business like snow business.

After trying the sport, the 35-year-old Surrey resident knew right away it was something he wanted to share with others. The Yeti series was born when Campbell, who was organizing summer adventure races at the time, attempted to find a winter equivalent. The series now consists of five races and weekly drop-in training sessions at the Yeti Snowshoe Academy on Mount Seymour.

“I became very passionate early on, and I still have the passion. It’s exciting. It’s about getting out and having fun, and it’s a very social activity,” Campbell told the Georgia Straight. “Anybody can do it. It’s so accessible, whether it’s for children or families or people who are looking for a good workout. It’s awesome cross-training.”

Although anyone can snowshoe at their own pace and with very little instruction, Campbell says the sport is gaining momentum among runners, cyclists, triathletes, and mountain bikers as a way to maintain their fitness during the winter months. And while many of those types have taken to the competitive aspect of the series, the Yeti isn’t all about being the first across the finish line.

Campbell has designed each of his races with two distances—five and 10 kilometres—and he’s also offering free entry for children under 10 who are accompanied by a paying adult. And it’s the youth movement that has him encouraged about the future of his series and the sport.

“I’m really excited about the kids that are starting so early. There’s so much obesity at a young age in our society today. It’s super-sad. So it’s so great to get these kids to be active,” Campbell says. “And we’re manufacturing our future racers from a young age. It’s fantastic.”

And so is the growth of the Yeti series. Campbell staged his first race six years ago and attracted 23 entrants. (He was hoping for five, so he considered that number a huge success.) His first event of the 2007 series, held last month at Mount Washington, near Courtenay, drew 146 participants. And he’d like to see upcoming Lower Mainland events (February 3 at Mount Seymour and March 17 at Cypress Mountain) reach 200 entries. The Thursday night and Saturday morning drop-in sessions at the Yeti Snowshoe Academy (theyeti.ca/) regularly draw 75 people wanting to give the activity a try in a noncompetitive and nonintimidating environment.

“It’s so many of the same people coming back each time, it’s like an extended family now, with all of the people at the races and the sessions,” he says of the participants he has converted.

Campbell says that in the infancy of the Yeti series, he spent much of his time trying to rid people of their preconceived notion about snowshoeing—letting them know that the shoes they’d be using bore little resemblance to the ones worn by 19th-century trappers wandering into the bush to check their lines.

As with almost every other sport, technology has led to great advances in snowshoeing, making the footwear light, flexible, and easy to manoeuvre. Long gone are the days of looking like you had giant tennis rackets strapped to your feet.

“A lot more people realize that things have changed. Even a year ago, the first thing I had to tell people about snowshoeing was that the shoes are no longer made of wood,” he says. “I used to have to explain that all ?the time, but I think people are starting to realize that the shoes are now made of ?aircraft aluminum and PVC [piping].”

It’s those new materials that allow the competitive snowshoers to race on, over, and through the various snow conditions they find during Yeti challenges. Campbell says his races use the Nordic areas of the various ski hills, but as race organizer, he says part of the fun is making the competitors blaze their own trails.

“We have single-track and double-track [side-by-side] sections on every course, and we like to use sections of cat [snow-grooming machine] tracks, which are great for passing,” he says. “But we have a little bit of everything, from packed snow to powder, although we try to keep the powder to a minimum. It’s a lot of work. In the races, there’s a lot of strategy about powder, whether to be the guy in the lead and do all the work and get tired or to hang back and wait for an opportunity to pass. I mean, why waste your energy?”

Campbell is someone who knows a thing or two about energy. An avid runner and snowshoer himself, he says he’s just too busy organizing the Yeti events to take part in his own races. But he plans to continue to do what he can to help the growth of snowshoeing throughout British Columbia, and he sees the 2010 Olympics as a platform to promote the sport.

“I don’t think it will become an Olympic sport because of so many factors—from the number of countries participating to the fact another sport would have to be taken out—but we’re certainly hoping to use 2010 to gain some exposure,” he says. “We’d love to be included in the opening ceremonies or something and maybe put on an exhibition. After all, snowshoeing is part of our heritage.”

There is no doubt that the sport is part of this country’s past, but the question is whether or not it will be a large part of our future as well. Considering the time and effort Marc Campbell has put into his pastime, and based on the first six years of the Yeti series, it appears that the sport is in good hands—and on solid footing—in the Lower Mainland. -

Jeff Paterson is a sportscaster and talk-show host on Vancouver’s all-sports radio, Team 1040. E-mail him at jeff.paterson@team1040.ca .