In the backpacking world, you come across a lot of gear and making an informed decision can be hard in a world of buzzwords untested gear reviews and gear of the year awards that reward flashy new ideas over trail tested design. It’s easy to get lost in the hype. This series aims to show you the best of the best gear that has proven itself to us year after year mile after mile. This is gear that earns its place in your pack. It represents a pinnacle of both form and function.

This is essential gear on today’s episode, katula microspikes. If you’re not familiar with microspikes, they are a lightweight traction device, that’s used for walking on ice and hard snow and they fall somewhere between a full-size crampon. You might use mountaineering and some of the lighter weight traction devices like yak tracks that you might use to walk across an icy driveway at home before we get too deep into this review. Let’s talk about some of the tech specs of the micro spikes, a pair of size, medium micro, spikes weighs 13, 7 ounces and, as you go up in size, you gain an ounce and, as you go down in size, you lose an ounce.

So a large is 14 7 as small as 12 7. Now there are some newer models of microspikes that are out now that weigh a little bit less I’ll talk about those at the end of this video, the materials on the micro spikes are pretty simple, there’s just two of them. You have your stainless steel on the bottom, which makes up the spikes and chains, and you have the thermoplastic elastomer on top, which is the kind of rubbery stretchy bit that sits snugly. Next to your shoe.

As far as actual spikes go on the bottom of the shoe, you have 12 stainless steel, spikes that are 3 8 of an inch long and that’s it price point on microspikes hovers anywhere between 60 to 70, it’s a little bit more than most of the competition, but for good reason and we’ll talk about that soon. All right now we’re going to get into the when where and why you might use microspikes. So when is easy, there’s basically three times you might use them, and that is in ice and snow and another category I’ll just call miscellaneous I’ll get to that in a second so for ice, if you’re walking over a frozen creek if you’re walking around a frozen waterfall or even if you’re, just on a trail where water has collected or pulls somewhere on the trail or flows over the trail, you’re going to come across times when there’s just flat out ice and you need a way to cross it safely.

That’s when you would wear micro, spikes for snow if you’ve ever hiked a long trail where there’s snow. You know that early in the morning, because it’s been cooler overnight, that snow is basically ice and you’re going to need something so that when you walk out under that steep snow field, you don’t just slide down the whole thing to your deck and again that’s where micro spikes come in handy. The cool thing is when you’re through hiking, you can use micro spikes to get out really early.

You don’t have to post hole all day if you get out when the snow is compacted and frozen, and you can just walk straight across it now another instance of snow that micro spikes come in handy on is compacted or packed down snow a lot of times when I’m snow shoeing, especially here in colorado. The trails are going to be compacted down and pretty heavily used. Snow shoes really don’t add much to a situation like that they just kind of get bulky and in the way, so micro spikes actually give you enough security and traction to walk on that compacted snow safely, and you don’t have to deal with big bulky snowshoes for the other category, there’s just a few times where you might want to wear micro spikes, some people wear them on really muddy hills and that helps them keep from slipping down the hill in the mud and a lot of people wear them when crossing a slippery or wet log across a stream.

It’s not something you think about often, but having those spikes to dig into that wet log will keep you from rolling an ankle into the water. So that’s the wind, you might use micro spikes, let’s get into the wear, I’m going to break down where you might use micro, spikes with the big three trails, because they kind of cover a great segment of the us and the conditions you might encounter. On the a t. I would consider using micro spikes in the smokies and in the white mountains of new hampshire and potentially maine too now.

Obviously, every year is going to be different and you may not even have any ice in those areas, but on years where there are heavy rains and freezing days, you’re going to have a lot of ice, and you may need extra security when walking up those steep slopes, not common on the at, but you may need them moving over to the west coast. On the pct, I would say in the sierra you may run into situations where you need micro, spikes in the cascades, where you get into some high elevation peaks and a lot of ice, and sometimes in washington, because in the late season it can get icy up there as well.

Now, if we move to the central us across the continental divide trail, there are a lot of times where you’re going to need micro, spikes, primarily in northern new mexico, where it freezes over in the mountains up there. Pretty often all of colorado can call for micro spikes depending on the weather and the snow that year and then sometimes in glacier as well, because they get a lot of snow up there and it gets cold enough at night that it freezes over pretty often outside of the big three.

I would say that here in colorado, micro, spikes are a must have pretty much. Everyone here in colorado has a pair, because you are always bound to run into ice on a winter hike outside of here. If you’re anywhere in the northern us, you probably should have a pair and then just beyond that anywhere, where there’s frequent snow or frequent ice, that’s pretty obvious, but micro spikes come in handy. One final place where micro spikes come in handy is on a high route.

Just by their very nature, they have a lot of snow and ice and you’re going to need some traction. So you don’t go sliding off the mountain. As for the, why on microspikes yeah, you have the easy stuff. Like you don’t slip on ice, you don’t slip on hard snow. You can cross a log, but that’s pretty obvious to me. The y is more personal and it’s a few things. So for me, a micro spike is a piece of safety gear kind of like an ice axe or something like that. It’s something that you might not use all the time, but when you need it, you really need it and it your life is sort of on the line when you’re using it microspikes have been extremely dependable.

For me, I’ve had mine for three years, as has me hap, and they have never broken they’ve worked flawlessly every time. I’ve used them and, to be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever slipped in them in addition to that, because they’re safety gear, one thing that I find essential for safety gear is that you’re actually using it and because they’re so lightweight and compact, I don’t ever hesitate to throw them in my backpack and bring them with me yeah. I might not use them, but when I do need them, I’ve got them and I can slip them right on very easily.

Also. It should be mentioned that these are really comfortable. There are no places that pinch your foot at all. You can use them on a heavy boot, but even on a lightweight trail runner, I’ve found that even with a thin fabric, they’ve never been uncomfortable for me and they just kind of conform to your foot, there’s no places where a blister might form and I’ve literally worn them all day and been perfectly fine in them. So a few more y things katula has a two year warranty, which is nice and more than most of the other companies and speaking of other companies.

There is a lot of competition out there for lightweight traction, but in my opinion, none of them come close to microspikes and if you look on a long trail, 9 out of 10 people wearing traction are probably going to have micro spikes on and that is because of the durability and just the materials as well. A lot of the cheaper companies out there are using metal that either rusts or bends and breaks easily or an elastomer. That’s not meant for cold conditions, whereas with the catula elastomer, it’s actually meant to perform well under extremely cold conditions.

Others might break or kind of be really brittle. On top of that, katula is a really cool company and they donate one percent of their sales to preserving indigenous mountain communities around the world, which I think is pretty cool and probably not something that some of the other amazon brands can say. So that kind of wraps up the. Why? If you have any questions, leave them below? Let’s get into some quick tips for micro spikes check out these micro spike tips, and then here we cut to the tips, and then we go back to the real video.

So actually, I have three tips for you for micro spikes. First, one is if you’re between sizes and the sizing is listed on the box here, it’ll tell you kind of what size you need for whatever your shoe size is if you’re between sizes or really close, I would say, go up in size. The reasoning behind that is my growth. Spikes can very easily fit around a trail runner, but if you happen to be using a heavier weight boot or like a thicker snow, boot you’re going to want a little extra give in your micro spikes so that you can use them on both your trail runner and your boot and going up in size will allow you to do that.

Second tip katula offers two color variations in the micro, spikes, red and black. I say if you’re going to get one go for red. The only reason behind that is, if you drop them in the snow or on the ground, reds just a little bit easier to see than black, you might actually notice them before you take off and leave them behind. Third and final tip on the micro spikes comes down to sizing. Now, obviously you don’t want the micro spikes too tight, so that they don’t pinch you too much or kind of lift up your toe box.

But, more importantly, you don’t want them too big. You don’t want these chains on the bottom to rattle around or any of the spikes to be loose at all. They should fit fairly tight to the bottom of the shoe and that just keeps them from sliding around too much on you. When you’re going up steep terrain, you want them to be flush. Pretty simple and they’re really easy to size. If you can try them on in a store all the better. Like I mentioned earlier, there is an updated version of these micro spikes available.

Now these are the ones that me have and I’ve been using for around three years with great success, but in the updated version, they’ve improved a few things. First off they’ve integrated this little tow bar, which was a little bit fiddly, trying to get it into the right place when you’re putting them on they’ve integrated that into the actual thermoplastic here to simplify, putting them on, and so they get a little less tangled. When you just throw them in your pack, they have made the thermoplastic a little more durable and lighter weight, which is cool.

They have completely welded the chains on the micro, spikes and mine have never come undone or even showed any signs of bending, but they’re now welded, so they can’t come undone, so another durability upgrade and finally they’ve added little grommets to these holes where the metal joins the thermoplastic and in theory these grommets will disperse some of the force here and lessen the risk of these metal pieces pulling through the plastic. I’ve never had that happen to me, but I have seen it happen to others that wraps up the new model and that wraps up this video.

To sum it up, micro spikes are awesome, they’re the traction you need, if you’re going on a thru-hike and you need traction and they’re just the overall category winner, in my opinion, by a long shot, I’ve used them extensively and even on my last trip on the wind river high route, I used them and there were times where I don’t know. If I would have continued forward. If I didn’t have the micro spikes it felt pretty unsafe without them I probably would have turned around.

So they allowed me to keep going on my trip, which is awesome and that’s why they are essential gear. Thanks for watching hope. You enjoyed see you next time, one final where, where you might use no, that sounds stupid. So, like I mentioned earlier, there are which, if you never use if yours as heads there are a lot of competitors out there to micro spikes, but I really they an elastomer that just doesn’t cut the cheese. Putting that in so you.