5 Reasons Men Over 55 Are Bolting These 18 Steel Teeth To Their Boots Before The First Freeze
I fell twice on my own driveway last winter. The second one cracked two ribs and cost me six weeks of not being able to sleep on my side. I'm 63. I don't get to fall anymore.
Here's the thing nobody warns you about getting older: it isn't the falling that gets you. It's the six weeks after.
When I was 30 I went down on ice hauling pipe and got up laughing. Last February I went down on my own driveway carrying a bag of salt — the irony isn't lost on me — and I laid there on the ice for a good thirty seconds doing math. Can I move my legs. Can I get to the door. Is my wife home.
Two cracked ribs. Six weeks of sleeping sitting up in a recliner. Couldn't lift my grandson. Couldn't turn the wheel of my truck without wincing.
And the whole time I'm thinking: that was a bag of salt and forty feet of concrete. That's it. That's all it took.
So I bought cleats. And here's where I'll save you some money — because the first two pairs I bought were garbage, and I want to tell you exactly why before I tell you what actually worked.
The first pair was the coil kind. You know the ones. Rubber bands with a steel spring wrapped around them, everybody's grandmother has a pair in the hall closet. They work fine on fresh snow. But we don't get fresh snow up here — we get snow, then a warm day, then rain, then a hard freeze. What you end up with is three inches of powder sitting on top of a solid sheet of glass. The coils just skated right across the top of it. I nearly went down again in my own garage doorway.
The second pair had little studs glued to a rubber pad. Those actually gripped. For about nine days. Then the studs started popping off one at a time until I had a rubber pancake with four teeth left on it.
The third pair is the one I'm still wearing. Two winters now.
Here are the five reasons they're different — and why I've now bought pairs for my brother, both my sons, and the neighbor who plows my road.
18 Steel Teeth That Punch Through The Snow And Bite The Ice Underneath
This is the whole ballgame, so I'm putting it first.
The danger isn't snow. Snow you can walk on. The danger is what's under the snow — that layer of refrozen glass you can't see and don't know is there until your heel is already sliding out from under you.
Coils sit on top of it. These go through it.
Eighteen stainless teeth, a quarter inch each, mounted on steel chain that crosses under your sole. Two clusters under the ball of your foot, one under the heel. Step down and you hear it — a sound like somebody cracking a nut. That's the teeth going through the powder and setting into the ice.
And here's a detail that took me a while to appreciate: the teeth are spaced wide. The fancier-looking ones with 24 teeth crammed together pack up with wet snow and turn into a snowball under your boot. Wide spacing means one hard stomp clears them out.
"First steps on ice with these was damn near a religious experience. I've seen a few folks go down out here. Not me."
They Don't Slide Off Halfway Down The Driveway
Look at the photo. Look at where the rubber sits.
Most cleats are a band that stretches around the edge of your sole. Great — until you're a hundred feet from the house and it rolls off the toe of your boot. Now you're standing on one cleated foot and one bare boot, in the dark, on ice, trying to get a rubber band back over a size 11.
I've done that. It's how a man gets hurt.
These cup over the toe box and wrap behind the heel — your boot drops down into them instead of them stretching around you. There's a velcro strap across the top too, though I'll be honest, I stopped using mine after the first week because they never budged.
Two winters. Snowblowing, hauling firewood, walking the dog on the back road. Never once come off.
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Let me be straight with you, because the reviews that only say nice things are the ones you shouldn't trust.
These are eighteen metal spikes. Do not walk into your garage with them on. Concrete is slicker than the ice — a fellow I know landed hard on his garage floor doing exactly that. Don't wear them on hardwood, don't wear them on the good linoleum, and if your wife has a rug by the back door, do not test it.
That's the trade. Here's why it doesn't matter.
They come off with one pull. Ten seconds, standing on the step. They came with a little drawstring bag, which I thought was a throwaway until I reached into my truck door pocket blind and remembered why you keep spikes in a bag.
Mine live on a nail by the back door all winter. Boots on, grips on, out the door. Come back, grips off, into the bag. That's the whole routine.
One tip from a man with arthritis in both hands: put them on your boots before you put the boots on your feet. Sit down, stretch them over, then step in. Takes the fight right out of it.
They Fit The Boots You Already Own — Including The Big Insulated Ones
This was my worry going in. My winter boots are Muck boots — the tall insulated rubber kind, size 11, thick as a phone book. Half the cleats out there are cut for trail runners.
The rubber on these stretches a long way. Mine go over the Mucks, over my leather work boots, and over an old pair of sneakers I keep for taking the trash down.
They also don't fold up under weight. I'm 240 and I've had this snowblower dragging me sideways up a grade — teeth held, nothing bent. A guy in the reviews who drives a tow truck runs them every day of the season at damn near 300 pounds and says the same thing.
Get the size right and it's a non-issue. Large covers most men's work and winter boots from 8 to 12. Medium is for the smaller end. When you're between, go bigger — the rubber gives, and a hair loose beats too tight on a January morning.
Ice Was Just Where It Started. I Wear Them In April Now.
I didn't expect this part.
We've got a bank behind the house — maybe a 30 degree pitch, covered in pine straw and wet leaves. Every spring I have to get up there with a weed trimmer, and every spring I slide back down it on my backside at least once. Boots with good lugs don't matter. Wet pine straw over wet clay is a slide, and that's that.
First warm weekend I forgot to take the grips off and went up that bank with them on. Walked straight up it. Stood there sideways on the slope running the trimmer with both hands, no white knuckle grip on a sapling.
Since then I've used them on wet grass, in the creek bottom, on the mud two-track going back to the deer stand, and once on a gravel drive so washed out it was basically a streambed.
So don't file these under snow gear. I bought them for four months and I get eight.
What I'd Tell My Brother
If you're 35 and you bounce, buy whatever's cheapest. I'm not writing this for you.
But if you're past 55, if there's a driveway or a barn or a mailbox at the end of a long stretch of concrete, if you've caught yourself standing at the back door in January doing the math on whether you really need to go out there — then get a pair before the first freeze, not after. Everybody I know who owns these bought them the week after they went down. Including me.
- 18 quarter-inch stainless steel teeth on welded steel chain — not glued studs
- Wide tooth spacing so wet snow clears with one stomp
- Silicone frame cups over the toe box and heel — won't roll off mid-walk
- Stretches over work boots, insulated boots, muck boots and sneakers
- On and off in ten seconds, storage pouch included
- Tested past 300 lbs without bending a tooth
- Works on mud, wet grass, pine straw and loose gravel too
- 120-day no-questions-asked return policy
Mine hang right there, next to the door, from November to April. Cost me less than one co-pay.
The company's running them half off right now and throwing in the pouch and the winter safety guide with the multi-packs. Buy two if you've got a truck — one pair on your boots, one pair in the cab, because the time you need them most is the time you're not home. That's not a sales line, that's just what everybody up here does.
They sell out mid-December every year. If it's in stock, get it. If not, check back.
That's the review. Take it for what it's worth from a man who learned it the expensive way.
— Ray
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