In 1878, looking for Canadian snowshoes, he visited the Exposition Universelle in Paris, where a Swedish representative showed him the long, narrow boards that his fellow Scandinavians used in winter. He bought the stand display of the unified kingdom of Norway and Sweden. They were snow skis, traditional wooden planks for sliding on snow. Duhamel purchased the skis without instructions on how to use them. Back in Gières, he researched skis in his extensive library, finding a reference to their use by Arctic explorers in a 1539 Swedish encyclopedia. Duhamel realized that the simple lace binding was complex. Due to his lack of mastery of the link with an adapted shoe, he was awkward and took several years to master skiing technique. In 1889, with the best bindings cobbled together by a craftsman, he managed one successful trial to Chamrousse, which ended with a final somersault. He then undertook a trip to Finland in 1890 and met members of the Sami people (or "Lapps") already familiar with the terrain and the use of skis. The tests were successful; skiing became an enjoyable exercise and a tourist pleasure in the fresh air. Duhamel imported fourteen pairs of skis, equipped with good bindings produced in Norway, and proceeded to distribute them to his friends over the years. In November 1895, some of his athlete friends, skiers sufficiently distinguished, decided to gather in a ski club in imitation of the British. The association saw its constitution officially recognized on 1 February 1896. Recreational skiing for the urban bourgeois was born in France.