By Jay Bouchard, Outside

Growing up in Goffstown, N.H., I watched my dad obsess about shoveling. The area gets approximately 70 inches per year, and my dad delights in getting rid of it. He estimates that he moves about 3,600 cubic feet of snow each winter and has hucked roughly 108,000 cubic feet since he moved there in 1987. For him, it’s a source of pride to have one of the cleanest driveways on the block. My dad also has no desire to “disrupt the environment with a small, loud, emission-spewing machine,” otherwise known as a snowblower.

My dad’s go-to shovel is “whatever’s on sale at the local hardware store.” He’s not a brand-conscious shovel purchaser, but he’ll typically use a plastic, straight-shaft shovel with a metal strip across the front of the blade (to chop through ice).

But I wanted to know what the pros prefer. To find out, I called up some experts in the snow-removal industry.

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