The best ice cleats, and why the parking lot is the dangerous part of a ski day

The most dangerous hundred yards of a ski day

A ski resort spends real money keeping the slopes safe and almost none keeping the parking lot from turning into a skating rink. The lot gets driven on, packed down, melted by warm tires at midday and refrozen by four o’clock, which produces a surface no winter boot tread was designed for.

Now add the way people cross it: in unbuckled ski boots with zero ankle articulation, carrying skis over one shoulder, holding a child’s hand, at the end of a day when their legs are finished. That is the accident, and it happens to people who skied all day without falling once.

A traction device is the cheapest piece of safety equipment on this entire site. The one on this page costs less than a resort lunch and lives in a jacket pocket. It is worth owning for the same reason a helmet is: the failure it prevents is the one you do not see coming.

Coils, carbide and spikes: three different products

Everything in this category gets called an ice cleat, and the three designs are not interchangeable. What separates them is what touches the ground and how deep it goes.

For the buyer this site is written for - a family that skis a few days a year - coils are almost always the right answer. They grip the surface a resort actually has, they cost a quarter of what spikes cost, and they will not gouge a lodge floor or the mat in your car footwell.

What these makers publish, which is unusually a lot

Most soft-goods categories on this site publish adjectives. Traction is the happy exception: coil gauge, spike count, spike length, per-pair weight and size bands in real shoe sizes are all stated, so the comparison below is arithmetic rather than opinion.

Size it to the boot, not to your shoe

This is the single most common mistake in the category. These devices are sized to the footwear you stretch them over, and a size 9 winter boot is dimensionally nothing like a size 9 sneaker - it is wider, taller in the heel and thicker in the sole.

• Yaktrax states it plainly: for oversized shoes or boots, buy one size larger than your normal shoe size.
• Kahtoola publishes a separate size chart for insulated boots on the MICROspikes page, which is the most useful single piece of documentation in this category and the reason that product fits ski-trip footwear predictably.
• Too small is the failure mode that hurts: the band stretches thin, rolls toward the arch and comes off mid-stride, usually on the step where you needed it.

If you plan to wear them over winter boots, measure the boot rather than guessing from the shoe you had on when you ordered.

The picks

Yaktrax Walk

The cheapest useful answer, and for a lot of families the only one they need. Yaktrax publishes 1.2 mm steel coils on a polyelastomer band, four size bands stated in women’s and men’s shoe sizes, and the intended terrain in plain words: packed snow, slush and mixed conditions. That is a description of a resort parking lot in February.

It has no spikes, which sounds like a downside and is partly a feature - you can walk across a lodge floor or a bathroom tile in them without leaving a trail of gouges, and you will not shred your car mats on the drive home.

Honest cons: coils are not spikes, so hard blue ice on any kind of slope is outside what this is for. The elastomer band is the part that wears out. And the warranty is 90 days.

Yaktrax Pro

The pick for anyone crossing a lot in ski boots, and the difference is one strap. The Pro adds a removable over-foot strap on a natural rubber frame, which is what stops the band walking itself off the back of a tall, stiff, smooth-heeled boot. It also publishes a thicker 1.4 mm abrasion-resistant coil and the only cold-temperature figure in this group: tested safe from breakage down to -41F.

That cold number matters more than it looks. Elastomer and rubber stiffen as the temperature drops, and a band that is brittle at dawn in a Rocky Mountain lot is a band that splits while you are stretching it over a boot with cold hands.

Honest cons: it is still a coil device, so steep or glare ice is not its job. It costs about a third more than the Walk for a difference most walkers only notice on boots. Same 90-day warranty.

Kahtoola EXOspikes

The step up that makes sense for someone whose winter includes actual ice. Twelve tungsten carbide spikes per foot set in aluminum and TPU lugs, a published 208 g per pair in medium, five size bands given in US men’s, US women’s and EU sizes, and a four-year warranty. Kahtoola calls it road-to-trail, and that is the honest description: it bites on frozen sidewalk and on packed trail without being the full mountaineering answer.

If you walk a dog before the drive to the hill, or the path from your rental condo to the lifts is a refrozen boot-pack, this is the one that stops being annoying.

Honest cons: carbide tips are shorter than the MICROspikes’ 10.4 mm steel, so they bite less in deeper snow. It is over three times the price of the Walk. And spikes on a lodge floor are a problem, so these come off at the door.

Kahtoola MICROspikes

The most thoroughly specified product in this category and the skip for most readers of this page. Twelve heat-treated 400-series stainless spikes per foot at a published 10.4 mm, welded stainless chains, six sizes, per-size weights from 285 g to 422 g a pair, a separate published fit chart for insulated boots, and a four-year warranty.

Everything about it is better documented than its rivals. It is also the heaviest and the most expensive thing here, and it is engineered for icy trails in mountainous terrain. Buy it if you hike in winter. For a hundred yards of parking lot, you are carrying 338 g of stainless steel to solve a problem that 1.4 mm of coil already solved.

Fitting them over the three kinds of footwear you actually own

Traction devices are stretched over a shoe, so the shoe decides how well they work. There are three cases on a ski trip and they behave differently.

• Winter boots. The easy case, and what these are designed around. A lugged rubber sole gives the band something to grip and the heel gives it something to hook behind. Size up one from your shoe size, as Yaktrax states.
• Ski or snowboard boots. The hard case. A ski boot heel is smooth, tall and hard, and a plain elastomer band slides off it. This is where the Yaktrax Pro’s removable over-foot strap stops being a nice extra and becomes the reason the thing stays on. If your device has no strap, do not count on it over a ski boot.
• Sneakers or town shoes. Works, and this is the use most people get the most value from - the walk from a parking garage to a restaurant in an icy resort town. Coils are better than spikes here, because spikes on a cleared sidewalk wear down and skitter.

What they do not replace

Worth being clear about the boundaries of this category, because the marketing is cheerful about all of them.

The line between the second and third rows is where snowshoes take over: cleats grip a hard surface, snowshoes float on a soft one, and neither does the other’s job. The traction guide covers the full range, and the backcountry page is where the fourth row goes.

Two rules about when to take them off

• Indoors, always. Coils are survivable on a hard floor; spikes are not, and neither is safe on a wet tile entryway, where metal on tile is its own kind of skating rink.
• Never drive in them. Metal against a pedal is exactly as bad an idea as it sounds. They come off before you get in the car, which is also when you are most likely to lose one - clip them to a bag rather than putting them on the roof.

What to check each autumn

These live in a drawer for eight months and then get grabbed in the dark on the first icy morning, which is exactly the wrong moment to discover a problem. Two minutes in November is worth it.

• Stretch the band fully. Elastomer perishes with age and UV. Cracking at the stretch points means it will split the first time you pull it over a boot in the cold.
• Look for rust and count the coils. A broken coil leaves a gap with no grip, and a rusted one is on its way to breaking.
• Check spikes for wear on spiked models - carbide and steel tips blunt on pavement faster than on ice.
• Put them in the car, not the house. They are only useful where the ice is, and the place you need them is the parking lot you are already standing in.

Care, which is two lines

Rinse the salt off and dry them before they go in a drawer. Road salt is what eats the steel, and a device stored wet in a warm bag is a device with a rusted coil in October. The end-of-season storage page covers the rest of what gets put away wet and regretted.

Who should buy what

• A family driving to a resort a few days a year. The Yaktrax Walk, one pair per adult. Children stay off the ice, not on it in cleats.
• Anyone crossing the lot in ski boots. The Yaktrax Pro, for the strap.
• Winter walkers and dog owners. The EXOspikes, for the carbide and the four-year warranty.
• Anyone on genuinely icy trails. The MICROspikes, and use the insulated-boot chart rather than guessing.
• Anyone on hard-packed trails on foot. The wider traction guide covers where cleats stop and snowshoes start.