Crescent Moon Leadville 29 - Women's Review

This easy-to-use snowshoe offers an upturned nose and a teardrop shape, mimicking your feet' taper and encouraging a natural stride. The binding system is comfortable, and you can easily adjust it to fit anything, from your Gortex trail runners to oversized snowboard boots, with the pull of one loop.

Performance Comparison

Flotation

While flotation is not the only benefit snowshoes offer, it is the main attraction. The need for float varies depending on the terrain you plan to tackle. We ensure well-rounded testing by frolicking around in deep, fresh snow, packed snow, and icy terrain. The Leadville 29 has one of the largest surface areas in our lineup and offers a walkable stride in the wilds of deep powder.

One factor that contributes to float is the weight of the shoe. The Leadville 29 has an aluminum frame that helps keep things a little lighter. Unfortunately, the decking and steel crampons weigh it down, and it is one of the heaviest shoes we tested at four pounds 10 ounces for the pair. However, it also topped our charts for surface area, giving it a more significant footprint to lift us from the snow.

Crescent Moon covered the frame of the Leadville 29 with flexible decking, which helps it float well. However, the upturned toe of the frame reduces the footprint despite the large surface area. Nonetheless, the snowshoe has ample surface area, providing maximum coverage where the body's weight lands naturally during a step. This design allows the snowshoe to perform exceptionally well in deep and loose powder. The snowshoe's pivot angle on the forefoot also enhances walkability by enabling snow to fall off effortlessly, reducing unnecessary weight.

Traction

When hiking uphill or on slippery surfaces, having some texture on the sole of your snowshoe is helpful. The crampons' placement, size, and strength play a significant role in providing traction to your snowshoes. We test every pair of snowshoes in various environments, ranging from hilly areas with deep snow to steep, icy slopes.

The Leadville 29 offers three strategically placed steel crampons that work together for slip-free ascending and descending. A small two-toothed toe crampon called the toe clawhelps you dig the forefoot into the ground when hiking moderately steep terrain. Pair this with the seven-toothed crampon on the ball of the foot, and you've got yourself some excellent ascending traction. The third crampon is placed near the heel and helps offer traction on flat terrain and slippery descents. However, the Leadville 29, like most tubular snowshoes, has no grip on the external frame. If your weight shifts to the side of the frame, it can be very slippery, and our testers slid out downhill and missed the traction rails other shoes offer.

While there are no teeth around the perimeter, the crampons work great on packed trails. Having three distinct crampons is a somewhat unique design. Since we walk heel to toe, the three main contact points are your heel, the ball of your foot, and your toe. Positioning the stainless steel teeth to dig in at these locations optimizes your natural stride on moderate terrain. The traction could be better for side-stepping, steep downhills, or technical terrain. If you aim to explore high alpine environments, where you often encounter icy or glazed snow and may need to kick steps, then more aggressive crampons and a frame with serrated lateral traction would be a safer choice.

Walkability

Walking with a natural stride can be difficult when your shoes are four times the size of your feet. Luckily, snowshoes have come a long way in shapes that support stride ergonomics. The Teardrop shape of the Leadville 29 is an excellent model for women's snowshoes because it allows for one the easiest strides when traversing different types of snow.

The Leadville 29 is specifically designed to accommodate a shorter, more narrow stride. The exaggerated teardrop-shaped platform is based on the shape of your foot, allowing your feet to pass by each other without altering your stride. Keeping the snowshoe frame wide at the ball of the foot and narrow at the heel allows for a very natural stride. Women made this design with a feminine body in mind.

At its broadest, the Leadville 29 is around nine inches and roughly 29 inches long, but the extreme teardrop shape makes for an easy-to-maneuver set of snowshoes that don't click together at their widest point or their tails. You can deploy heel lifts to help you climb hills, but the removable wedge of this design is bulky. That said, they are also removable, which is a nice feature. Be sure to store them somewhere safe, or you'll be kicking yourself while suffering up your next steep ascent.

Bindings

Bindings should offer comfort and support. During our testing, we pay attention to the general comfort level, ensuring that the bindings do not rub, pinch, or unevenly distribute pressure across the foot. The straps on the Leadville 29 are very flexible, offering a cage over the front of the foot and a single strap around the heel. We had no discomfort in the bindings of the Leadville 29 and found the straps remained malleable even after sitting in freezing temperatures.

The Leadville 29 snowshoes have a unique single-loop pull system that offers equal tension to the entire foot, providing support and comfort throughout your hike. The binding is quickly adjustable with the help of a cam buckle, quick pull loop, and ratchet heel strap. This type of binding is commonly found in snowshoes and adjusts the entire front and side bindings at once. You can tighten the back of the binding with the ratchet heel strap. While the binding is usually secure, the straps may shift in steep terrain, particularly for testers who wear smaller shoe sizes. These bindings are secure and comfortable in moderate terrain but shifted for some testers only on the most burly downhills. The toe box may be roomy for petite shoe sizes but can easily accommodate oversized boots. Our testers found these snowshoes to be their favorite for hiking in bulky snowboard boots.

Should You Buy the Crescent Moon Leadville 29?

The Leadville 29 is a high-performing snowshoe at a fair price, but its value depends heavily on the type of terrain you plan to explore. The curvy teardrop shape provides a natural stride in any snow conditions and is an ultra-comfortable choice for casual hikers or a daily commuter. However, the traction could be better, and grippier options exist to climb your next mountain.

What Other Snowshoes Should You Consider?

The Leadville 29 offers premium stride ergonomics to women through an incredibly curvy teardrop shape. If you want walkability and technical capabilities for steep terrain, the MSR Lightning Ascent is another comfortable and easy-to-walk-in snowshoe. If putting your trail running shoes to rest for the winter makes you sad, we also love how the TSL Symbioz Hyperflex Racing feels for moving on packed trails at a faster pace. Finally, if you want snowshoes but are on a budget, the MSR Evo Trail and Tubbs Wilderness are fantastic options.