Blog

With two glacier crossings on the Tour of the Matterhorn crampons came highly recommended, but they would only be used for a few hours on two of the days and both glaciers were at relatively shallow gradients, there was very little steep terrain to cover.

Bearing all this in mind we decided on the Petzl Irvis Hybrid crampons which at 536grams for the pair weren’t too onerous bearing in mind we’d be carrying them around for a week. That weight also includes the tough pouch to protect your other gear, though getting them in the pouch is an art.

The crampons have an aluminium section at the back with a steel section at the front and come with either a toe post fitting or a universal toe boot fitting at the front – I fitted the latter as I was going to be fitting them to my La Sportiva TX4 GTX Mid boots, quite a soft hiking boot.

The front and rear section of the crampons are linked by a strong cord which is threaded through retaining lugs to set the size for different sized boots. I did this and the cord stayed in place so they were set correctly when I came to use them on the first glacier.

Another reason for choosing these is the size of the spikes, much more akin to standard crampons to the lighter weight micro spike type product which would have not been suitable for a glacier. I was able to strap them to my boots without a problem but they did have a tendency to come off until I understood why.

The retaining strap passes around the heel and is supposed to nestle into a recess on the rear plastic boot fixing adjacent to your Achilles tendon. The trouble is that this recess is not positive enough, if my boots had been stiff mountain boots then the heel section which fits round the Achilles tendon would not have flexed and the strap would have stayed in the recess. However with my soft boots the strap kept slipping off the recess, loosened the crampons and they came off the boot.

I managed to fix this issue by threading the retaining strap under the metal clip which acts as a hinge for the rear plastic retaining clip, this prevented the strap from riding up and off the recess – it was job-done, and I’ve passed on these comments to Petzl.

In use the traction was perfect, as previously mentioned the glacier crossings were across glaciers that were only gently sloping, so, given that these were only strapped to soft boots they were the ideal compromise.

Congratulations to Petzl for producing such an innovative product and we’re looking forward to try out the Leopard Flexlock, all aluminium crampons which are even lighter.

Mark Richardson
Mark was the founder of Ultralight Outdoor Gear back in 2006 and has completed long distance backpacking routes in some of the remotest parts of the world. His favourite hikes have been Torres del Paine (full circuit), the John Muir trail and the Markha Valley trail (Ladakh, India). Although semi-retired Mark has not lost any enthusiasm for minimalist backpacking and is tackling Scotland’s Munros choosing multi-day backpacking routes over the more usual guide book excursions. Read more from Mark Richardson