After a week of slipping and sliding around on the ice-covered streets here in Bellingham, I've been informed of a totally cool invention called "Yak Trax." You are looking at a picture of them. They strap onto your boot or shoe and hopefully stop you from falling on the ice. This morning I talked with some of my fellow walkers who have told me they use them. The only real problem most people have is to forget to take them off before entering a store with slick floors: they will cause you to fall because they don't grip the floor like they do the ice.
I just placed an online order with
Cabela's, my favorite online outdoor outfitters. Their closest actual store is hours away in Olympia, but I've also learned that REI carries them locally. Having some other stuff to order from Cabela's I did some research and found that they also have several brands of ice grippers. Their own brand of grippers had 58 customer reviews and after having read them, I decided to buy these instead. Their own brand seems prone to breakage.
I was actually tempted to get a pair of ice cleats, available online from Amazon.com, but since I haven't heard of anyone actually using them and finding the reviews to be ambiguous, I decided against trying them out. They seem like a great idea, though: they slip on a boot in the same manner as Yak Trax, but instead they have just a few cleats on the bottom, as shown here:
In many ways these seem more practical, because I don't think you would be as likely to fall in a store if you forgot to take them off immediately upon entering. Instead, I would guess that you would just sound like you forgot to take off your tap shoes. I'm wondering if any of my readers have used any of these cool tools for ice-covered surfaces. When I get a chance to try out my Yak Trax, I'll let you know what I think.
:-)
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