Awesome ice grippers

Hi●●sou■d Trail Crampon Ultra £40

So many times I’ve headed up into the wintery mountains in the Lakes and Snowdonia with my full crampons sensibly packed in my rucksack. And in truth, that’s where they’ve mostly stayed, because outside of Scotland the snow cover tends to be a bit sketchy, and often the dusting of snow and ice isn’t substantial enough to warrant a full set of crampons. The result is I’ve ended up slipping and sliding around on icy rock. These Trail Crampons from Canadian company Hillsound are more like ice grippers, and are a revelation in conditions like this. Eighteen 1cm stainless steel spikes enable travel over rock, ice and snow with stability and ease. They are a fraction of the weight and bulk of normal crampons, they take seconds to put on with Velcro straps, and can be worn with almost any outdoor footwear. They’ve worked marvellously for me over wintery mountain terrain for the past couple of years. They are not able to front-point up steep slopes, so they are only effective on terrain where you can flat-foot up the gradient of a slope, but on ground like this they’re awesome.

Verdict

They’re a cross between crampons and ice grippers, and will transform slippy, slidey hillwalks where the terrain isn’t too steep.

USED BY Jenna Maryniak, Trail deputy editor USED FOR 2 winters