Originally Posted by
arthurking83
The rubber feet that nardes linked too look like something that could work as snow shoes in such situations.
As for ballheads being easier to clean .. not that I've seen myself.
Years ago I got myself a National Geographic version of a Manfrotto ballhead due to a specific feature that the NG version had over the frotto version.
The NG version is for all intents and purposes just made by Manfrotto but I haven't ever seen a Manfrotto version with the same feature.
I personally don't really care for such marketing, but the feature that swayed me(compared to a Manfrotto version of this ballhead) was that it has a rubber protective cover over the ball area.
It works quite well, the tripod has seen many desert scenes over the years and apart from one issue it's served me well enough.
I assumed that as the workings of the ball and socket were of a very low velocity type(not like a car CV joint or something high speed like that) the use of grease was superfluous.
So I spent a can of WD spray on it(and another Manfrotto head) to clean as much grease as I could off the ball.
End result was a complete transformation of the head.
it went from being a not very much liked head .. to one of my favourite heads henceforth........
The other modification I did to the ballhead was to remove the immensely strong, but generally annoying RC5 plate and replace it with an aftermarket Arca Swiss type.
While it makes no difference to stability in any way, I prefer the less tedious Arca plates over the large manfrotto plates.
FWIW: the only tripod leg setup that is totally sealed against the ingress of external matter is something like Manfrotto's Neotech series of tripods.
It is a heavy set of legs, as they are of a hydraulic type. The sealed hydraulic legs make them 'environmentally sealed'(to a degree).