Slip-sliding no more?

The trail had been straightforward up until now, but in the last few minutes I'd passed through the lower edge of the daily thaw, where patches of murky ice and dirty sugar snow sprouted from hollows and twists in the trail. I stopped to plan my way around a short section of gleaming dirt, which was surely black ice hiding beneath a dusty coat. The spring birdsong stilled; there was treachery afoot. The forest watched as I took a small step up to a patch of frozen pine needles, and then another onto a tiny nunatak. I felt it bite reassuringly into my boot. So far so good. One more careful step onto turf, and then a long stretch to...SHIT! My supporting leg slid from under me and I hit the ground hard, wrenching my shoulder. My hands and feet slid on the ice, and I shot backwards, off the trail, and down a short drop, fetching up hard against a waiting tree. Blood welled from my knuckles, and I cursed myself for not having replaced my useless traction spikes.

This season has seen some strange conditions. With so little snow, and temperatures flitting about like an angry wasp, many scrambles have been safe from avalanche, but packed to glass by freeze-thaw and the passage of feet.

Following a disagreement between my right calf and my usual (rigid) winter boots that led to a month of physio, I've been hiking in lighter footwear this winter, but that's caused a problem. My walking crampons are 1980's vintage, in wonderful French neon pink and purple. While the colours are fairly immaterial, my collapsed arches and "sixth toes" (bunions) are not. So these days I wear wider boots, and the crampons only fit my summer boots. That's given me a few options: summer boots that are too light for kicking steps but take my highly fashionable crampons; heavier boots that won't take the crampons; or spending money on yet another set of traction devices. Compromise versus cost. Fashion doesn't really enter into it these days (my wife would question whether it ever did).

At this point I should own up to having too much gear. I have at various points owned at least three sets of climbing crampons, plus one for walking, and two pairs of walking traction devices. That's a lot, considering you can only ever wear one pair at a time.

So I really didn't want to buy any more.  It's not that I'm averse to buying gear; I'm just a bit tired of having to buy more gear when the old stuff is not at all worn out.  Trouble was, nothing was doing the job. My existing traction devices are good for walking on the sidewalk, but when I tried them out on sloping ground (Barrier Mountain and Wasootch Peak), one pair fell off after 50 m, and the other (Yak Trax) waited until a particularly steep and slippery section to jump ship, causing me to take a slide.

For a couple of weeks after that I sported my eighties neon, and wore summer boots, but that wasn't working. So decided to cough up for a pair of Kahtoola microspikes, on the basis that I'd counted twelve pairs in use on Prairie Mountain (a prime contender for the grade of WI 0, surely?) in February. The price ($75) was more than I wanted to spend, but I needed to do something before a simple slip became something more painful.

MEC had sold out of them for the 2015-16 season though, so I went to a smaller retailer, who shall remain nameless, because until then I'd always received great service there. The sales assistant was quick to pick up on my English accent, apparently assume that I couldn't possibly know anything about mountains, and then inform me that he had recently run up my next intended scramble - just so that I could fully appreciate the calibre of mountain god which whom I was dealing. My hackles were rising already...

After a few minutes of his attempting to sell me something that I didn't need, I felt myself veering sharply into the dangerous grumpy-old-man conversational territory of, "look son: I was climbing f***ing mountains before you were born", so I thanked him and left empty-handed, but financially intact. I had, at least looked at a few products, sifted through advice, and decided what I didn't want:

- Devices that fall off;
- $150 replacements for my existing crampons; and
- Microspikes that are so big that they cause skitter and extra ankle flexing when walking on rock (in the way that crampons tend to).

The latter factor, plus the $75 + GST price tag, was now steering me away from Kahtoolas. Those spikes are fairly large. They look great for punching through ice, but perhaps not so good for crossing slabs. Or at least, not as good as I was really hoping for.

Fortunately, the next store that I visited was less tourist-focused. The guy behind the counter was an eastern European climber, who was fully aware that Britain has produced the odd mountaineer over the years. Five minutes later, I left the store happily: job done. Not only had I found something that ticked (or rather did not tick) all three points on my list, but I'd paid only $40 for that pleasure.

Here's what I bought:

Hillsound Freestep 6.

Notice the metal bar across the toe, that helps to seat them. Also, only chains pass under the boot, so they should wear fairly well. They were easy to put on, and sit a long way onto the boot, making them less likely to slip off.

I used these spikes for about two hours' scrambling that day; they were great. The low profile and wide spread of the spikes meant that I had no problems on slabby sections, while they gripped well on icy parts of the trail, too. They also stayed on my boots, once I'd centred them properly. I'll revisit this assessment in a year, when I've seen how well they last.