Roping together on an icy path?

penguin_pam

I'm planning a mountain hiking trip and one of the issues is that the trails that we're following will almost certainly be covered in ice. There are two of us and we'll both be wearing shoe traction equipment like this: YaxTrax Extreme Outdoor Traction . The trails follow ridge lines and moderate slopes on relatively low altitude mountains (5,945' or 1,812 m). However there is the possibility that a slip on the ice will lead to sliding right off...

Originally asked by Blackbear on Stack Exchange (outdoors) (CC BY-SA 3.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

This is a bad plan for several reasons. YakTrax are not well suited for this situation. YakTrax are more specialized for people who want to go running on city streets in places with cold winters. For mountaineering, they're basically useless. They don't give enough extra traction. Microspikes or crampons would be more appropriate. Roping up is a specialized technique that is used, for example, when crossing a glacier that may have crevasses. It's not the best technique for the situation you're describing. For the situation you're describing, you should be carrying ice axes and know how to self-arrest. With your rope plan, if one of you falls, the other is unlikely to be able to self-arrest...

Full answer by user2169: https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/5264 (CC BY-SA 3.0).

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