Leaves are slippery, but not as slippery as pine needles! Nothing can go wrong with your method. It's brilliant, in fact. One of the gardeners I met here moves her wood chipped garden paths every couple of years for, like you, soil building purposes. That really appealed to me, so I moved three of my paths. (Years later I was shocked to see the Google satellite image of my property with a huge peace sign in front of the house. The three paths from the house verge into one.)

I had a new chipper once and I spent the whole fall making a beautiful, wood-chipped path through the deep woods from my yard to my blueberry field---about 600' of path---a gorgeous little finely-chipped meander that twisted whenever I came to a downed tree or other obstacle. When I returned to it in the spring, it was completely covered with leaves, pine needles, branches, and criss-crossed with downed trees, and all my efforts were moot.

Except if my mission had been to improve the structure of the soil.

Fall is composting season for me. I have a leaf/pumpkin/pear drop/garden refuse/apple drop/grass clipping facility near me and starting in Oct., I drag home close to a hundred bags of chipped leaves and grass clippings and truckloads of pumpkins and apples---the primary fuel for the instant bins I construct. I came home from there yesterday, set up a hardware cloth bin and filled the large bin to the top---with the chipped/grass clipping leaves and pumpkins and apples spaced throughout. I always have one "household" bin which is ongoing and where I put my kitchen scraps. One year I covered my whole front lawn with bags of leaves, shoulder to shoulder---big lumps all over the lawn about three feet deep. The next summer I had painters here and their foot traffic pulverized those leaves in short order. Constant complaining though.

The amount of leaves that you'll need to make much of an impact makes for pretty uncomfortable walking. If you have time, they'll settle, but whole leaves take a while to calm down. If you have access to both products, I'd use wood chips and save the leaves for direct garden placement or put them under the wood chips or, if you prefer the more natural look, and I agree, sprinkle leaves sparsely on the wood chips. Every spring, I cover my paths with cardboard and new wood chips and the soil underneath is pretty.

Sorry for the lengthy post. I'm still high from yesterday's dump run.