The YAKTRAX Pro shoe crampon is a lightweight traction assistance device designed to slip over most shoes and hiking boots. The design is a single piece of rubber that has a criss-cross pattern across the bottom and wider sides designed to slip up over the toe, sides, and heel of your footwear. The sections that criss-cross the bottom have a long piece of steel that coils around them from one end to the other. As you walk through your normal gate, the pressure pushes the various parts of the steel coil down into the packed snow and/or ice, providing the traction. The design is wonderfully simple and ingenious at the same time, with the makers claiming it provides up to 10 times the traction of the various micro-spiked versions made by competitors. Overall, it fared well on my one limited trip with them, but there are some concerns as well.

Planning for a Saturday hike on a late Friday night, I purchased the YAKTRAX Pro shoe crampon without doing any prior research. I knew I needed a traction device as I was headed up to higher, colder, elevations where there was likely to be packed, icy trails where hiking boots alone wouldn't work. I stopped at the local REI about 15 minutes prior to closing, did a quick gaze across my options, snatched this one up (it was the most stocked item, should be a good sign, right?) and checked out for a total price tag of $29.95 before taxes. When I got them home I put on my hiking boots and did a trial run putting them on. They were snug and required some effort to pull fit them over the hiking boot, but it wasn't overly difficult. You want them to be tight to limit movement while hiking, so any traction device designed to slip over footwear will require a similar amount of effort. No particular disadvantage there. The Pro version does have an additional Velcro strap that crosses over the laces of your footwear, allowing you to cinch across the top to help minimize movement of the crampon while hiking. Sitting in my basement, this seemed like a good design idea.

I started the hike in my boots, but it didn't take more than 20 yards to realize that, without additional traction, I'd be risking broken limbs all day. Congratulating myself on the foresight to make the purchase the night before, I pulled the YAKTRAX Pro crampons out of my backpack and slipped them on. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't liking sliding your feet into your favorite pair of slippers before settling in to read a good book in front of a toasty fire, but it wasn't difficult either. I managed to put them on while standing, with one foot pulled up over the knee of the one leg I was balancing on and using both hands to pull them on. This was while standing on a fairly decent incline on packed snow too, so not bad all things considered. Good points for ease of deployment.

As soon as I started hiking again, I noticed a huge difference. I felt very sure footed, almost as much as on a dry trail in the summer. I would say they were exceptional on packed snow, and very good on ice. There were some really steep sections of the trail that I never would have made it up in just my hiking boots. With the YAKTRAX Pro on, using some thoughtful foot placement, I walked right up. So far, I was very pleased with the purchase. However, I had some issues on the return trip. The hike out was all up hill, leaving a constant descent for the return trip. After a short while coming back downhill I noticed that I didn't feel the same 'biting' action I had earlier. The criss-crossed sections with the coils designed to be on the bottom had slid over, so they were no longer directly under some of the pressure points and didn't have the same number of coils making contact with the surface. I adjusted them and started on again. A short distance later there was the noticeable perception of reduced traction and, sure enough, they had shifted again. Like the directions on a shampoo bottle (rinse and repeat) I had to keep adjusting the YAKTRAX every so often. This was most noticeable after I needed to side-step down a hill due to a steeper incline. Even with the Velcro strap tightened down, it seemed like the downward force of my weight would cause the bottom to slide to the uphill sides of my boots. Because the whole return trip was downhill, this kept happening. While it was easy to fix, it was frequent enough to become mildly frustrating to continue to stop and adjust. I haven't tried any other brand of device that is also designed to slip over footwear, so I can't really compare it to anything at this time.

Overall, they did what they were designed to do, and did it fairly well. My bigger concern was researching them further after my trip. They get good ratings for providing traction, but a lot of reviews complain about the longevity. It seems the coil design might have a flaw in that a lot of people report that the rubber strips across the bottom break easily, and without much wear. Some reports indicate that the pressure of walking on the coils may cause them to cut through the rubber they are wrapped around. Once the rubber is cut, the coils slide off and you are left without a traction device (at least without some MacGyver type problem solving). On a long trek, this would be concerning. I looked at mine and don't notice any abrasions to the rubber anywhere along the crampons. Then again, I only hiked about 4 miles in them, so I guess time will tell. While I could return them to REI, they did well enough to stay in my gear back and go through a long term testing process. I'll provide detailed updates in our Forum section as I continue to use them and, if need be, return here to adjust the overall rating.

I'll give these 4 out of 5 campfires. They did what they were designed to do and, while they slipped shifted on my feet during downhill traversing, I haven't tried anything else to compare them to. Without a direct comparison, it seems to me like any brand following the same slip on design concept would be apt to shift when pressure forces it in one direction or another, so for now I can't deduct too much from the overall rating for this issue. I am concerned about the long term durability, but I'll have to test that for myself and just make sure I have some materials to rig up a way to keep them functional should they blow out on me during a trip.

See them at REI.