Reviewer Information

• Name: Cora Shea
• Age: 24
• Gender: Female
• Height: 5 ft 9 in (1.75 m)
• Weight: 150 lb (70 kg)
• Email address: cahhmc "at" yahoo "dot" com
• Location: Los Angeles, California, USA
• Date: January 13, 2005

Basic Product Information

• Year of Manufacture: 2004
• URL: http://www.snowclaw.com/
• Listed weight: 13 oz (368 g) (on hangtag) 11.8 oz (335 g) (on website)
• Weight as delivered: 11.8 oz (335 g)
• Measured dimensions: 11 in (28 cm) at widest point, 12 in (30 cm) at longest point
• MSRP: $29.99

The SnowClaw is billed as a lightweight replacement for the more traditional snow shovels. It is a single piece of slightly curved aluminum with a slot handle on each side.

This report covers long-term use, care, and maintenance from June 2004 to January 2005. For field testing performed during April to June, 2004, please see my Field Report. For more general product information, more visual details, more reporting on appearance, structure, and items that can be tested and commented on without field testing, please see my Initial Report.

Long-Term Testing

Good Sides

On one hand, the SnowClaw is a great tool. Especially when early summer came, when I certainly no longer wanted or had a need to carry a full shovel for avalanche safety, the SnowClaw slipped right into my pack. This helped me out a lot since I still sometimes had a need to chop through partially covered springs higher up, or to level out patches near where I was sleeping or cooking. In later season, especially this December where the Sierras received 100 inches (2.5 m) of snow in 10 days, I have had plenty of opportunity to fling powder, which the SnowClaw does with aplomb.

For small tasks such as digging shelves and storage areas, I learned to wield the SnowClaw much more easily to some extent, though not as much as I had expected in my field report. Its maneuverability is quite good, and with some practice I mastered the correct angles to more or less sweep snow where I wanted it.

In general, the soft snow performance of the SnowClaw is quite nice, assuming I did not have to do anything with the snow other than fling it behind me. I could fling snow behind me from a standing position faster than any tool I've used. Also, the SnowClaw was nice for fine detail carving work because of its maneuverability. But, these are also pretty specific uses. When digging a kitchen, for example, the snow has to be lifted out of an area rather than simply flung to the side, and I would prefer a handled shovel far above a SnowClaw.

Difficulties

The additional practice over the summer, fall, and winter improved my accuracy; however, it did not really solve the hard snow issues. As the snowfields became proportionally solidified to their diminishing size, I would scrape through the sun mush and consistently get thrown off of my shoveling swing once I hit a harder layer deeper down. And on later and much more snowy trips I encountered the same issues. While performing tasks such as improving my hardened kitchen platforms or chopping out a top hole for a quinzhee, the SnowClaw was consistently of little to no use.

This finding was consistent with my troubles earlier in the test on trips with hard snow and avalanche debris. This is not to say that the SnowClaw is useless in hard snow, only that I feel significantly slowed down and hindered compared a traditional shovel with a handle. The reasons for this I outline in depth in my Field Report, but the issues essentially amount to the SnowClaw not having the leverage and potential to be driven with a lot of force that a handled shovel has.

In short, my continued field use only solidified my opinion that I would personally never use a SnowClaw as my only shovel when in avalanche terrain.

Another difficulty I had was that the patience and care needed to move snow greatly increased in not-simply-flinging-snow tasks. These tasks include such common uses as moving snow in an up-horizontally-down fashion, or scraping out platforms in especially hard crusty snow. The light weight of the SnowClaw is nice, but having an all-around handled shovel which gives me leverage and a contained scoop is nicer. I continued to have issues with snow sliding off the front of the SnowClaw when scooping rather than flinging snow. This made bringing snow up vertically out of a pit (such as to make a kitchen, as I mentioned above) very frustrating at times while trying to keep the snow on the SnowClaw while moving it out of the pit.

On a side note, I also think I am a pretty demanding shovel user in the snow, so take that into account too when considering my opinions. I ski and camp in all sorts of snow and big avalanche terrain, I build near-palatial snow caves, I dig kitchens with all the amenities, and I need my shovel to live up to that accordingly - especially to live up to a handled shovel in hard snow. I have learned to depend on what a handled shovel can do, and although the SnowClaw has its merits with light weight and specific use, those merits have not been sufficient for me.

Long-Term Use Comments

Durability

The durability of the SnowClaw has been fantastic. I have fallen on my pack on it, shoved it recklessly into nooks, crannies, and rock piles for storage, thrown it short distances for the purposes of determining aerial suitability, eaten off it, and slid down about 3000 vertical feet (900 m) on it on my butt. After all of that, it has nary a scratch. The curve remains smooth and even, and the plastic handles have held on beautifully. Some of the paint has chipped off the edges, but then again some of my skin chips off every season too.

Care and Maintenance

The SnowClaw has required virtually no maintenance. I've stored it wet with no problems, and the fact that it gets raked through the snow while shoveling keeps it quite spotlessly clean. It has no moving parts to get crunchy in the late season dirty snow like most extendable-handle shovels do, and overall I simply throw it back in my gear bin once it's dry and forget about it until the next trip. I like that!

Manufacturer Comments

Chris, the president of SnowClaw, was kind enough to contact me about my SnowClaw experiences. Regardless of the performance of a product, it means a lot to me when a company tries to help me use one of their products better. Thus, I wanted to mention it. Thanks Chris!

Chris did not have too many suggestions on how to improve my skill with the aluminum SnowClaw, but he did offer me some studies on the strength of the aluminum SnowClaw when used as a snow fluke. Despite my high interest in its use as such, I felt very uncomfortable during this test series even commenting on the use of the SnowClaw as snow protection because independent safety testing is a tough thing to do. However, if this is something that interests my reader, I highly suggest contacting him (via the SnowClaw web site is a good method) to obtain the studies.

Summary

Overall, I consider the SnowClaw to be a niche piece of gear. For winter travel, I found the aluminum SnowClaw to be woefully inadequate to punch through hard snow. This eliminated it from being my sole shovel in my winter skiing and mountaineering kit. On the other hand, for a backup shovel, a specialty shelf-making and carving shovel, or a spring shovel when the snow is soft and avalanches are no longer probable, the SnowClaw is a nice compact tool which fits easily in every pack I own.

• Upsides for me:
  
  • Many uses (tush-sled, plate, etc)
  • Compact and light
  • Durable and easy to maintain

• Downsides for me:
  
  • Hard snow performance is terribly frustrating and slow
  • My knuckles get a good bashing on hard snow
  • Personally I don't feel sufficiently prepared with it in avalanche terrain
  • Difficult to do anything with shoveled snow except fling it

Read more reviews of SnowClaw International gear
Read more gear reviews by Cora Hussey

Reviews > Snow Gear > Axes and Shovels > SnowClaw Aluminum Pro-Series > Cora Hussey > Long Term Report