Sherpas with Step-in bindings (Prater?) Spotted on Ebay

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Rick

Rick

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I am posting this at the risk of angering PB or DM, but I am hoping the risk is negligible compared to the VFTT Member value (some lucky VFFT member might buy them) of these very hard to find Sherpa Snowshoes I just spotted.

Disclaimer:They are not mine, and I know nothing of them, other than the high degree of rarity of what looks like a Bill Prater Binding.

http://cgi.ebay.com/SNOWSHOES-SHERP...ryZ58136QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
 
Sherpas with the Bill Prater binding are awesome snowshoes, assuming you use plastic boots. The "Buy it NOW" price is remarkably low; less than what I recall was the price of the bindings alone when Sherpa was making them.

But note that they are 36" snowshoes. Big and heavy!!!

Let me remind you that it is still possible to buy Sherpa quality snowshoes: Hope for lovers of Sherpa snowshoes. I am not small, but am happy with a 25" Tubbs frame retrofitted with the IRL claws.
 
Bill is a New England boy. His binding uses a modified Lowe Foot Fang. I had opportunity to hike with him when he was designing this binding and used a pair on th smaller Sherpa Deck. Although a bit on the heavy side these shoes will climb with a vengance.
 
Ah, Sherpa Snowshoes

Best Snowshoes ever ~

I have a pair of these. I wear them every now & then.
They are heavier than a lot of shoes made these days.

So quick & easy to clip on & off :cool:

Only complaint I had with them was, once in awhile, in certain snow conditions, snow would build up between the decking & the binding plate.
Kind of like a natural tele-vator, fine for going up hill, but annoying on flats or downhill.

If you are a light n fast devotee, not your kind of shoe. A great shoe for acquiring leg strength.

Sherpa sold a repair kit, which came with the frame lacing & clips.
Easy & fast repairs you could do yourself. Ok, I could go on forever :rolleyes:
 
skiguy said:
Bill is a New England boy. His binding uses a modified Lowe Foot Fang. I had opportunity to hike with him when he was designing this binding and used a pair on th smaller Sherpa Deck. Although a bit on the heavy side these shoes will climb with a vengance.
Click to expand...

I might be a bit confused but I thought Bill & Gene Prater devoloped the snowshoes out in Wisconsin where they had a horse farm, then Gene con't with the buisness for a longer period of time.

Did Bill Prater move "backeast" ?

Envious... I would have liked to hike with either one.

I tracked down a snowshoe marketed by one of their nephews..it was ummm... unattractive would be a nice way to put it....

E-bay : the main thing I noticed with some of the e-bay Sherpas (perhaps others ) is that some of them are "cooked" or brittle from being stored in barns or attics.
Sometimes you'll notice in the pics a little webbing seems broken off or something subtle like that...sometimes most all the webbing is missing or unraveled...that would be a clue that the decking itself might be fried.

Other than that there are some beautiful snowshoes sometimes offered on e-bay some indigenous collectors items, for sure but I just "window shop" and ooh.... & ahhh... over them but don't bid on them.
 
OK, time for a quick history.

Bill and Gene Prater lived on a farm in Washington. They were outdoors-oriented from the get-go and spent a lot of time climbing in the Cascades and elsewhere. Gene got a job in the aircraft manufacturing business and got acquainted with the magical properties of anodized aluminum. Beginning in the 50s, the brothers designed and refined a new type of snowshoe, with aluminum frame, neoprene decking, and crampons, to overcome the disadvantages of ash and rawhide-laced 'shoes in the mountains. That snowshoe became the Sherpa, which Bill sold in a business he started. (The name was borrowed from a local climbing club.) Eventually Bill sold the business and the new owner relocated it to Wisconsin. Gene wrote the trail-breaking Snowshoeing: From Novice to Master back in the mid-70s. The book had an enormous effect in popularizing snowshoeing, especially in the West but elsewhere as well. He wrote other books on snowshoeing also.

I think it's fair to say that these two guys had a bigger impact on snowshoeing than any other individual(s).
 
spider solo said:
I might be a bit confused but I thought Bill & Gene Prater devoloped the snowshoes out in Wisconsin where they had a horse farm, then Gene con't with the buisness for a longer period of time.

Did Bill Prater move "backeast" ?
Click to expand...

Sorry for the confusion. I should have probably worded things a bit differently. "Bill is a New England boy at heart" might have been better wording. The reason for that is that the Bill Prater binding is IMO well suited for hard crusty NE conditions. Part of the motivation for this binding was to all but totally eliminate the use of crampons. Not that you would not leave your crampons behind...but decrease the switching from snowshoes to crampons and back again. Right now in certain areas of the Whites like the Presies and Francs these shoes would be convienent.
 
Last edited:
I believe that the original Sherpas came with the "potato peeler" (officially Alpine Binding), which is helpful but not really useful in hard packed snow. The next huge improvement was the "Tucker Claw", originally designed (from what I have heard) by a Boston hiker.

The Bill Prater binding is simply the Tucker claw in a step-in format.

When all is said and done I much prefer the lace binding of the Sherpa/IRL snowshoes to the more "salesman friendly" bindings that are now fashionable. Sure, in the store they look remarkably easy to put on, but they can fail in a variety of ways in the field.

The lace binding has a learning curve (rather short!), but is much less likely to fail in the field.

To me the saddest thing about today's snowshoe market is that there is no demand for real quality. Burt, of Moor and Mountain, was very impressed with the IRL bindings, but decided not to stock them. He knows his customers, and feared that they would not pay the price :(
 
Mohamed Ellozy said:
The Bill Prater binding is simply the Tucker claw in a step-in format.
Click to expand...

I am going to agree with you and disagree with you here. The Prater binding is a modified Tucker. Not only for step in action but there is an added front claw much like having front points on a crampon. That's what really makes them climb!
 
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