I've dug out an old pair of crampons for the Alps and the rubber anti-ball plates have perished. I'm keen not to spend any more than necessary so I'd prefer to use the crampons as they are. Will my parsimony get me killed?
I've used a variety of homemade anti balling plates over the years, all work to an extent! Gaffer tape and a loo roll tube worked well! Probably worth investing in a set though.
Whatever you do don't go without anything if you've got significant snow to deal with, I learnt the hard way on the Pelvoux!
Quite possibly. Balled-up crampons are a serious hazard, particularly if the snow is soft & warm - often the case when you're descending in the afternoon. As a slight aside, the amount of vertical steel on the crampon gives an indication of how badly they'll ball up - the "pastry-cutter"types being worst.
I made some tidy ones using an old DH MTB innertube and some wire to hold the things on. Gaffer tape is an easy one for emergency use but if you use them for a while bits of plastic break off and go everywhere.
So let me get this right - you can afford to go to the Alps but you can't afford £20 or so one something that might possibly save you life and that of your partner? DIY options are all very well and good but it's not really the time or the place to find out that they don't work very well or they've fallen apart when you weren't looking.
It's a few grams of weight. Better to have and not need than to need and not have. Nothing worse than boots weighing a tonne due to icing up, dangerous too!
I am mostly these days. I never really got fully into DH, spending the majority of the time pushing a heavy bike up hill between short bursts of fun wasn't doing it for me.
On checking the needle sports website a pair of proper plates is about £30... It's up to you but the same Google search revealed this thread from a while back:
G12s? Get the original Grivel plates. They are excellent, no other make or DIY bodge comes close in terms of durability and function. I even fitted some G12 plates on my old DMM Aiguille crampons.
Thanks again, everyone. Yes, strictly necessary would seem to be the answer. I have found replacement plates online for £15 - avoiding testing my DIY skills is probably worth the price. Having said that I cannot see any reason why a DIY fix would not be effective if a suitably resilient material were used (Dave mentions this in his excellent blog post above).
In reply to EarlyBird: Out of interest are these the old (>10 year old) style G12s with the black flat anti balling plates or the newer ones with the yellow pop up ones?
A few years ago I saw some cheap AustriAlpin crampons that appeared to be identical to the old G12s. So similar I wondered if they had bought the tooling.
I had a pair of those. They changed the design slightly so the new yellow anti balling plates don't fit on the front. I think they will go on the back though.
I've only once worn crampons without anti balling plates and it was fine most of the time. But, on the descent they started to ball up and it was like trying to walk on platform shoes - really horrible. I had to kick the snow off every other step when I was at my most knackered. It only happened because I'd swapped crampons with someone as they didn't fit their boots and kept falling off. Never again!
One refinement to the DIY route is to use a curved section of PET fizzy drinks bottle. This acts very much like the rubber ones with a "spring out" action.
Mind you thousands of folks went for decades without.
My darts needed a bodge job. Black nasty wrapped around the front flat bit worked well, the back seemed to get knocked off by the adjustable bar flexing. If I had to get fancy, I'd put a little rollmat under the flat bit and wrap black nasty to hold it on. Without, they can be hazardous and a nause as discussed earlier in the wrong snow conditions.
If all else fails in an emergency put thick plastic bags over each foot, pull up tight until the bag is pierced, and secure the bag round your ankles ( tape )
Never tried it, it looks awful, but I saw someone with this, and he seemed to be doing fine despite it being just the right sort of snow to cling to unprotected crampons.
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