Crampons for mud under development at CNOC

Don’t ya love first posts? Let’s try again!

Part of an interview at PCT days:

Hope these “Mudpons” work out. I would have paid big bucks to have a set for about 100 yards on this adventure:

https://backpackinglight.com/forums/topic/ohlone-wilderness-trail-central-california/

— Rex

Bean Boots:

A few wraps of actual chain (or rope) could work pretty well, as used to be done around Model T tire/rims

Several times I’ve thought about how useful crampons could be for some tricky sections of off-trail travel in the Grand Canyon.   Not so much for mud, but when traversing steep hard-packed gravely surfaces with no purchase like the Dox or Hakatai.   It’s hard but not solid rock, so maybe you could dig in with a steel crampon.

The inventor claimed he was inspired by a trip to Scotland, where he had to deal with mud and bog.

As a Scot, I’m open minded but a bit sceptical, as I’ve never felt the need. You can buy all-terrain trail shoes with lugs in the 6mm range which do pretty well on everything from road walking to steep mud – a lot of people use those here. If it’s too bad even for that, I guess you could also use trail crampons at  pinch, but I’ve never seen anyone being reduced to this – you’d just take care or find another route.

The only time I’ve ever wished for more traction outside of snow conditions wasn’t on mud, it was on sloping and greasy slabs where snow crampons would likely work better than these new mudpons. My solution in those situations was to wear my spare socks over my shoes – a trick Scottish climbers used to use in the 1940s on wet rock. But this is an extremely rare situation.

So the market would be limited to people who are walking in muddy areas in shoes not designed for mud and who are not carrying snow spikes. I may be wrong, but it seems to me that this is a pretty niche demand. The only advantage I could see is that the Mudpons would widen the choice of shoes you could use in muddy areas, but at the cost of weight and complexity.

A solution looking for a problem?

I’ve used my Kahtoolas for steep snotty sections of trail. Never for deep mud, but where the surface is really slick from a recent rain, the Kahtoolas perform as well there as on ice.