A field of nine competitors took in trails around Hidden Lakes last Sunday for Athletics Yukon’s first snowshoe race of the season.

Whitehorse’s Hannah Shier won the five-kilometre race in 32 minutes, five seconds, followed by Jerome McIntyre 13 seconds later.

The start of the race at 1 p.m. featured seasonally high temperatures, with the mercury floating around 0 C.

“You can’t ask for a better day in January than that,” said race organizer Ben Yu Schott.

Athletics Yukon is planning a series of three snowshoe races this winter. Hidden Lakes was the first, with the next two races planned for mid-February and mid-March. The locations have not yet been announced.

Athletics Yukon has 15 pairs of racing snowshoes that are available for participants to borrow at future events. They just need running shoes to clip in with.

“Sometime snowshoeing seems a little daunting for folks,” said Yu Schott.

“These shoes we have feel just like running.”

Rounding out the rest of the field were: Don White (34:30), Amelia Fraser and Lauren Whyte (36:34), Helen Shappers (39:21), Bonnie Love (48:02) and Shari Heal (1:07:22). Darby McIntyre also participated, but ran off course and did not get a time recorded.