62 
FOREST AND STREAM 
February, 1922 
HEAVY SERVICE ICE -CREEPERS 
YOU MAY ONLY NEED THEM NOW AND THEN BUT WHEN YOU 
DO THE CHANCES ARE THAT YOU WILL NEED THEM BADLY 
By ELON JESSUP 
T here are certain varieties of 
life-preservers which are worn 
in winter and under the soles of 
your feet. These are known as 
ice-creepers. They consist variously of 
metal cleats, spikes or caulks which 
crunch firmly into slippery sheets of ice 
or hard crusted snow underfoot and thus 
prevent many a head-long tumble. 
To one who goes a-foot in winter, ice- 
creepers perform somewhat the same sort 
of service which tire chains do for a 
motorist. They are invaluable in an 
emegency. You need them only now and 
then but when you do, the chances are 
that you need them badly. It would be 
difficult to mention a more thoroughly 
hopeless, heart sinking sensation than 
that of losing all sense of control on a 
bare sheet of ice, especially so, if this 
happens to be located on a slope. 
Ice-creepers are an American, light 
weight adaptation of the heavy, some- 
what cumbersome crampons long used in 
Europe for glacier climbing. Almost any 
hardware and sporting goods store sells 
two or three different varieties of creep- 
ers. And you would be surprised by the 
number of different kinds of uses which 
are found for these. 
Nice old ladies strap on a pair of 
creepers before venturing forth on the 
slippery sidewalk to mail a letter down 
at the corner. Farmers wear them about 
their barnyards. Ice-fishermen use them 
a great deal. So do hunters, trappers, 
and mountain climbers. In fact, almost 
any one who walks in winter across slip- 
pery surfaces can find good use for a pair 
of ice-creepers. The skier and snow- 
shoer, of course, are included in this 
category for there invariably comes an 
icy slope when skis or showshoes must 
be taken off and creepers attached in 
their place. 
The A’arious uses of ice-creepers can 
be divided into two general classifications. 
These might be known respectively as 
light service and heavy service. Walking 
across frozen lakes and similar level 
stretches is what I mean by light service. 
There is no great strain placed upon the 
creepers under such conditions and even 
though they do fail to grip the ice as 
they should, the chances are that no great 
harm is done. 
Just as soon as you tackle a steep, icy 
slope, however, there is a great strain 
placed upon the creepers. This is heavy 
service. There is nothing better war- 
rented to throw one into a panic than to 
get half way across such a slope and then 
feel the sensation of having one’s creep- 
ers slip at every other step. Just one 
extra long slip, you realize, will be 
enough to set the ball a-rolling; and it’s 
a long, hard road to the bottom. Good 
ice-creepers under these particular con- 
ditions are real life insurance. An in- 
secure pair is worse than none at all. 
HEX. BRASS NUT 
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STEEL POINT 
TIP CASE HARDENED 
Calk for 6. 
PLAN OF 
L et me describe briefly the peculiar 
conditions found in the mountains 
during the winter and the reason for this 
will be plain. Take, for example, the 
A’hite Mountains. With snowshoes on 
foot you slowly plod upward from the 
valley through the shelter of a friendly, 
mountain forest. The snow underfoot is 
pleasantly soft and yielding. 
Suddenly, you em'erge above timber 
line. Here is a different mountain world, 
an open, bleak world. Some of the rocky 
pinnacles are quite bare of snow and in 
these spots the winter coat is one of 
glassy ice. A gale that sometimes blows 
at the rate of one hundred miles an hour 
has kept the snow moving. Much of it 
has found resting places in the more 
protected depressions of the steep slopes 
leading up to the pinnacles. 
Here are long, rangy stretches of hard 
crusted snow which is almost as solid 
as ice. To set foot upon this crust with 
ordinary footgear or snowshoes would 
mean the start of a long whizzing flight, 
hundreds of feet down the side of the 
mountain. You take off snowshoes and 
strap on ice-creepers. And I can assure 
you that only once in your life will you 
tackle such slopes with creepers which 
fail to grip firmly and are incapable of | 
standing a tremendous strain. The same 
lesson can be learned with almost equal ; 
force on the steep ice slopes of any hill j 
country. 
Under such conditions you are very -■ 
often trusting your life to the ice-creep- 
ers underfoot. So, it is extremely wise 
to make sure beforehand that they are 
worthy of the trust. Failure to do so ■ 
will be followed by a most uncomfortable 
afternoon, at the very least. 
I have canvassed stores quite thor- 
oughly in search of a pair of ice- 
creepers which would stand hard service. 
My quest has been wholly in vain. I 
have unearthed small insecure “vest 
pocket” arrangements of various kinds 
which do well enough for crossing a 
frozen lake but which in no way are re- 
liable on steep slopes. These are all 
meant to accommodate the “light serv- 
ice” element. There is not a single pair 
in the lot to which I would be willing 
to trust my life. And such is the real 
test of a pair of creepers designed for ' 
hard service. i 
If you wish a thoroughly reliable pair 
of ice-creepers, you will either have to 
make these yourself or have them made 
for you. I will presently describe several i 
methods of doing this. There are various 
things to guard against. The greatest 
variety of home-made ice-creepers I ever ! 
saw gathered together in one spot was 
on a winter climbing trip I once took with 
a crowd of fifty Dartmouth students in 
the White Mountains. 
Some of these creepers were good and 
others not so good. The inventive in- ' 
genuity of the college student combined 
with the sinew of the village blacksmith ' 
had produced a number of quite extraor- j 
dinary footgear contrivances. In sev- 
eral instances I found that the influence 
of the blacksmith had predominated. A « 
heavy horseshoe arrangement with pro- 
jecting spikes was quite a favorite. This i i 
was permanently nailed to the sole of a ' 
boot in much the same way that ?n iron i 
shoe is nailed to a horse’s hoof. This j 
outfit gripped the ice with fair security i 
but proved too heavy, cumbersome and 
tiring for comfort. Furthermore, it ne- ; 
cesSitated a complete change of boots • 
when snowshoes were taken off. d 
Ice-creepers which are heavy, labor 
under the same disadvantage as Swiss 
crampons. It is possible to receive the 
same amount of security in a lighter out- J, 
fit. A pair of heavy service ice-creepers | 
should be reasonably light to wear orj 
carry, easy to put on, and comfortably 
secure every minute they are on. Theyr 
