I've used various methods to weld stuff on grousers to help prevent sliding on ice or frozen earth, none ever last long because of the nature of the beast you know. Bolts, nuts, rebar, pieces of old cutting edge or some 1" blocks of steel. They all get torn off or worn off pretty quick. Cats will slide easy on mud, permafrost, ice, slick or wet clay, and rock. It's really not a fun feeling when you are in the seat. Visions of a track catching an edge and tipping over come to mind.
The dumber people in this video were in the car at the bottom taking the pictures. That Cat would have made mincemeat out of the car had it slid into it. I watched a old D9H slide into our company Suburban in Colorado one winter. Our clerk was getting some clutch time when he skated off a 25 or 30 foot incline right into the left side of the Surburban. It dented everything on that side and broke out all the windows. Neither door would open, and we had to drive that thing back to town that night in temperatures around 10 degrees above zero F. You know, duct tape doesn't stick worth a damn in cold weather like that, and the plastic sheeting we tried using to cover the holes wouldn't stay in place without the tape. It was a long, slow, and very cold ride home.
I watched a new D9L slide down hill about a mile on that same job. The operator figured he could keep one track in the snow bank and make her down to his work area. Well, he couldn't. He was lucky that he didn't fall off the side of the road he was on. That would have been about a 2500 foot tumble nearly straight down. The other lucky thing was that he was going down "dozer" first. When he figured out that putting the blade down only increased his speed, he thought to stick his ripper down. That slowed him down some, but more importantly, it kept him from spinning like the Cat in this video and he was able to stay on the road, even though the ripper tip didn't get much penetration. We stayed up there on that job then for 24 hours welding everything we could get our hands on to the grousers of all the dozers on the project, about 25 or 30 of them. That became a daily job for some of us for nearly a month.
We also put tire chains on all the Cat 777B haul trucks there for the same reason. These chains were custom built and cost about 1500 bucks each. The early ones weren't very sturdy and quickly busted. They were lying all about the place. The newer ones were much better, and very, very heavy. It took a tire truck to lift them in place and one set covered both rear duals on one side. (Had to take the rock-knockers off you see) We kept the chains on for about three months and even the newer ones kept a couple of guys busy all day long making repairs and putting busted ones back on. Not to mention repairing all the damage the chains did to the brake, transmission, and hydraulic lines in that area. It was tough to kep them tight.
We had some big Cat excavators on the job and welded crap on their track shoes too. They didn't move about as much as the dozers and the stuff we welded on lasted longer. It was still rough for them to go up or down hill, particularly on the roads as the frost was deep in the roadways and very slick. Quite often we hooked a big tow cable from an excavator to a Cat and pulled or towed them like that. Sometimes the two machines still tangled up.
I don't care if I ever have to experience a winter again!