I showed up a complete novice to Wildlands Conservancy’s snowshoe outing Wednesday morning outside Bethlehem.
“Is there a right and a left?” I asked Bill Murray (like the actor), a volunteer guide for the excursion who’s been snowshoeing for decades.
There are, he explained: The buckles should be oriented on the outside, and there’s a strap that goes around the heel. Trekking poles are optional to help with stability, said Nicole Landis, senior community engagement specialist for the Emmaus nonprofit Wildlands.
The Emmaus nonprofit Wildlands Conservancy leads a Winter Wildlife Snowshoe excursion Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, through Janet Johnston Housenick and William D. Housenick Memorial Park and Archibald Johnston Conservation Area in Bethlehem Township.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
Wildlands provided all the gear needed for about 15 people to snowshoe through Bethlehem Township’s 56-acre Janet Johnston Housenick & William D. Housenick Park off Christian Spring Road. There was no cost to participate, thanks to a Northampton County grant, and Wildlands has more free snowshoeing events on its calendar of upcoming events. Those looking to give it a try can also borrow snowshoe gear for free at Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center.
Wednesday’s focus, along with introducing newbies like myself to snowshoeing, was winter wildlife.
“We’re gonna be mostly focusing today on animal tracks because we have snow,” Landis said. “It’s a really cool time to get into tracking and wildlife. So tracks, scat, fur, feathers — looking for any kinds of sign of an animal.”
Nicole Landis, Senior Community Engagement Specialist with Wildlands Conservancy, briefs a small group before leading a Winter Wildlife Snowshoe excursion Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, through Janet Johnston Housenick and William D. Housenick Memorial Park and Archibald Johnston Conservation Area in Bethlehem Township.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
Murray, of Bethlehem, introduced the basics of snowshoeing, starting with keeping your newly clad feet about hip width apart. This helps to avoid stepping on the heel of your other snowshoe, a common cause of toppling over.
“Everybody do this: Lift your knees up and go down,” he instructed. “Lift your other knee up and go down. That’s what you want to do. You want to, like, kick your knee up a little bit, kick your knee up a little bit. And that basically helps you keep your snowshoes apart.”
As the gang mimicked his movements, a cacophony erupted as ice-crusted snow from Sunday’s storm shattered beneath everyone’s weight. It drowned out the hum of nearby Route 22, and a crow flew east, perhaps alarmed by the commotion.
Snowshoeing is not quiet, at least not with the crusty remnants of sleet that mixed in with the foot-plus of snow that had fallen days earlier. The only animals we’d scare up on our trek were a cottontail rabbit and several little, round birds. There was a moment’s glimpse of a bald eagle riding thermals overhead before it soared out of view.
Animal tracks are seen in the snow during a Winter Wildlife Snowshoe excursion put on by the Wildlands Conservancy Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, through Janet Johnston Housenick and William D. Housenick Memorial Park and Archibald Johnston Conservation Area in Bethlehem Township.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
But the tracks! They were everywhere.
Tracks of cat paws crisscrossed the property that is now a township park but was once the estate of Archibald Johnston, a Lehigh University-trained engineer appointed president of the Bethlehem Steel Corp. by Charles Schwab in 1906. He became Bethlehem’s first mayor when its constituent boroughs consolidated in 1918 to form a city. The township park is named for his late granddaughter and husband.
Johnston’s 1923 mansion stands tall atop a hill on the park property. The township has renovated the exterior, and the nonprofit Archie Project is dedicated to raising funds for further restoration to bring new life to its spacious three-story interior. It overlooks a Cedar Grove where three swimming pools once entertained guests. In the valley below, an open-air groundwater spring that once served the home still flows unimpeded by winter ice near the banks of Monocacy Creek.
Murray pointed all this out to the snowshoers once they came to a halt — the last crunch of the icy crust lost on the winter wind. He showed the visitors the boat house where Johnston’s family kept their craft that plied the creek in leisure. There are lime kilns, an historical feature probably installed more for celebrating heritage than processing lime for the property’s farm fields.
With the Camel’s Hump geologic feature in the background, the Emmaus nonprofit Wildlands Conservancy leads a Winter Wildlife Snowshoe excursion Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, through Janet Johnston Housenick and William D. Housenick Memorial Park and Archibald Johnston Conservation Area in Bethlehem Township.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
Raccoons seemed to have passed by the kilns, and there were indications of a deer having bedded down during or just after the snowstorm in some nearby brush.
Landis took note of Wildlands’ 2024 work to remove six dams on the Monocacy along the park and the adjacent Archibald Johnston Conservation Area. Restoring waterways to freer flows is among the missions of the conservancy, which has also protected some 65,000 acres from development in the Lehigh Valley region and maintains 14 local nature preserves.
Wednesday’s walk offered mysteries of the natural world. Nearby the onetime Johnston estate’s towering apple trees, Landis spied squirrel tracks beneath a tree limb overhead, but there was no trail. Maybe it had dropped in? What had dug away the snow to expose the ground beneath in another spot? Probably a deer looking for nuts.
Where the snow is already tramped down, a natural gait seems to work fine for snowshoeing. For me, the snowshoes sank in a few inches, so trailblazing in virgin snow meant remembering to bring up those knees.
The Emmaus nonprofit Wildlands Conservancy leads a Winter Wildlife Snowshoe excursion Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026, through Janet Johnston Housenick and William D. Housenick Memorial Park and Archibald Johnston Conservation Area in Bethlehem Township.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com
For hills, snowshoers might sidestep, or walk at an angle in a herringbone pattern like a skier.
“But we’re not going to be doing that today,” Murray said. “We’re just going to keep our right shoe away from our left shoe” and so on.
Snowshoer Mary Pat Lemass had only tried snowshoeing a few weeks prior, taking advantage of a friend’s pair for a walk through some of this winter’s earlier snow. She admitted to a wipeout, the result of stepping one shoe onto the back of the other.
“She actually got a video, so it’s hysterical,” she said.
Deanna Caracci and her family picked up some $40 or $50 snowshoes from BJ’s a couple of years back for a trip to Vermont.
“Walking in the woods in the snow is really difficult. You always obviously fall through the snow,” Caracci, of East Greenville in Montgomery County said Wednesday. “But we love to hike. So snowshoeing is nice because you can kind of walk on top of the snow and still get to see all the wildlife and still get exercise. And it’s a little bit more difficult than just regular walking. So I like the challenge.”
We ended up snowshoeing about a mile and a quarter, according to my iPhone’s fitness app. I was impressed by how dry my pant cuffs stayed, compared to trudging through snow in boots. And the cold was barely a factor as we heated up with the movement, despite west winds around 12 mph and an air temperature in the mid-teens making for a wind chill factor in the low single digits.
Wildlands has a Beginner’s Guide to Snowshoeing event planned for 1 to 3 p.m. today at Lehigh County’s Trexler Nature Preserve. Snowshoe with your Sweetheart! is set for Valentine’s Day on Feb. 14, also at Trexler. Find full details through the Upcoming Events page at wildlandspa.org.
At Jacobsburg outside Nazareth, snowshoes and trekking poles are available from 8:15 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Monday through Friday at the visitor center, 400 Belfast Road. At least 6 inches of snow are required, and a driver’s license or other state-issued identification is required to borrow equipment. For more information call 610-746-2801 or email jacobsburgsp@pa.gov.