High Stream Gear Ice Cleats for Kids Gear Review
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UPDATE: High Stream Gear Ice Cleats for Kids now are using stainless steel in their construction to better limit rusting. - as of Fall 2021
Kids slip. Kids fall down. That’s just a fact of life. Until kids begin to age and develop better proprioception (combining movement and sensation to develop body awareness), it’s just a fact of life. So, not a big deal, right?
Well, let’s talk about risks, again.
What if the reason a child trips isn’t because she just stumbled over her own feet, but rather because she slipped on the ice? I don’t know about you, but I get a very different reaction from my kids when they realize that they were the cause of their fall than when they fell because they can’t trust what’s under their own feet. In the former scenario, my kids may sniffle a bit if they scuff their hand. But in the later scenario, my kids can almost panic. Why?
I think it has to do with having, or losing, a sense of control. If it is self-evidently their own fault that they tripped, then they have the power and capacity to avoid the next fall. If something that is as firm as the ground, and which cannot be changed by my kiddos, is the culprit, then the little guys feel very unsure of their environment. This can lead to quickly feeling an apprehension that can ruin the trip… and maybe even future trips.
It is not unusual for my kids to say things like, “I hate this trail,” after a fall that they feel like they can’t avoid. Let me say that again, they feel like they can’t avoid the fall; even if that is untrue, that is their perceptions. Would you or I go anywhere where a fall was almost guaranteed… where we had no power to mitigate the risk of a fall?
So, that’s one of the risks, right? I can pretty quickly ruin a particular trail, or the generality of winter hiking at all, if the kids can’t trust the environment they are going out into.
And, of course, there is the physical risk. Multiple falls onto icy surfaces and rocks starts being a game of, not if, but when, one of those falls might yield an injury.
We take traction seriously, then. My wife and I have often used Kahtoola’s MICROspikes, and have done so for years. Of course, we have had them along for winter hikes over variable terrain, but we also have used them on steep but dusty trails where slipping is easy and a little bite is welcomed.
As we mention in the video, MICROspikes have become “the standard” in micro-traction.
But we couldn’t find anything as toothy and robust in kids’ sizes. It took a reasonable amount of searching to find these High Stream Gear Ice Cleats for Kids. They are the only traction devices that we could find that are similar in style and functionality to the MICROspikes.
As we mentioned in the video, there are a lot of similarities, but there are also some differences in materials used and cleat placement. They are far from perfect, but they do the job. And that job is a worthy one, when we think about the risks of injury and a miss-trust of the outdoors.