I bought a pair of stainless steel BD sabretooth and used them for the first time this week and have been extremely disappointed with them. They ball up constantly and i´m having to hit them with my axe every second step. Apart from being dangerous, it´s pretty exhausting at the end of a long day. My partners grivels don´t ball up at all. Has anyone got any advice?

Interesting. I just did the Coleman Demming route on Mt Baker last Sunday. We started from the car after 6:00 am and were therefore descending during the heat of the day in really sticky, sloppy snow conditions. My partner had brand new SS Black Diamond Sabertooths and I had Petzel Vasaks. Both crampons came with anti-bot plates. While we saw many other parties who were continually knocking the snow from their crampons, neither my partner nor I had any balling problems. You didn't remove the anti-bot plates from your crampons perchance?

Kp10 wrote:I bought a pair of stainless steel BD sabretooth and used them for the first time this week and have been extremely disappointed with them. They ball up constantly and i´m having to hit them with my axe every second step. Apart from being dangerous, it´s pretty exhausting at the end of a long day. My partners grivels don´t ball up at all. Has anyone got any advice?

The stock anti-ball plates should be plenty good enough. I've got the newer cyborgs and this past winter used them for everything, the anti-ball plates are standard BD and not perfect, might have to tap out the snow occasionally if it's really really wet/sticky snow but not to the extent you'd fatigue yourself out by doing so repeatedly. Did you buy the crampons used without the anti-ball plates?

The anti balling plates are on but are just highly ineffective

Sometimes in really sticky wet snow, it seems almost all crampons ball up. One trick I have borrowed from my snowboard is to spray some lubricant to the plates. I use rain-X, but you could use WD40 or even olive oil. Snow will not stick to the plastic when there is a layer of either wax (rain-X) or lubricant (Oil, WD40 etc.), so I would give that a shot before you huck them in a crevasse.

Cheers for the advice, I´ll give that a try.