Okay, here you can where the strap is fed through the snowshoes' lacings. By trial and error, I have found where I like to run it through to make them hang where I want. Change the placement to change the angle or height that the snowshoes hang at. Here, I am carrying them on top of a backpack. Despite the size of the 'shoes, they are pretty much insignificant in terms of weight. A couple pounds is all they are, I think.

Carrying them like this becomes useful when part of your route covers a plowed road, a trail that has had enough snowmobile traffic to pack it hard, or in the spring when one sometimes finds a half a mile of bare ground, then a quarter mile of 2 foot deep snow, and so on for intermittent stretches. Since they are so easy to carry like this, I often take them along if I think I may only possibly find a need for them.

I have another pair of snowshoes of differing dimensions, that I can just as easily carry like this. They are much shorter, but a bit wider. I simply run the strap through a little differently. I have given some thought as to how to make this system quick-detachable, but it is currently simple and works quickly enough.

These are a pair of Iverson "Alaskan Trail" models. 10" wide, 56" long, and the toe has somewhere around 10" of upturn on it, which is great for deeper powder when each step sinks in. With that much upturn, the toes do not bury themselves under the snow surface. Well, not usually. Sometimes, the powder is deep and fluffy enough (knee deep even on snowshoes) that they do, but with that amount of upturn, dragging your foot forward as a natural consequence of taking the next step causes them to plane up and out of the snow.
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