WildSnow Weekend — Keeping Warm With Geeky Boot Gloves

I also suffer from mild Raynaud’s Disease. And I use boot gloves whenever the temps are below 25F. Even with my intuition liners.

Another trick, to keep the toes and fingers warm, is to use low dose of an alpha blocker Rx drug like prazosin. 0.5 mg PO before skiing will keep those toes and fingers warm. But it might make your blood pressure a little low. So try it out at home first.

I’m also looking at buying some aerogel insulation and making boot gloves out of it. They say it has about 10X the insulating value of down. Something to tinker with in the workshop.
http://www.buyaerogel.com/product/spaceloft/

DIY tip: get some XXL down tent boots/ slippers, cut the bottoms off and mount some rubber cords where needed. Worked perfectly with my Aliens. I didn’t found Boot gloves available in Europe.

Lisa,

Thanks for the tip about Niacin. As a physician I should have thought about it. Thank you for the education.

I also use the ubiquitous toe warmers. With enough room in your boot, they certainly help.

JCoats, I’ve been told that Thermacell has thinned their insoles, very similar to your link. I’ve got some Thermacell set up in a pair of boots I use on super cold days. They took some work to fit correctly but I like the performance. A bit thinner would have been much easier. Too bad these use the cutesy name, I’m not sure what to call them. I guess Plus One? Or Plus One Plus Winter? Or Plus Winter? Or start a sentence with the + characters, as follows.

These things are interesting. + One might make it hard to write a coherent sentence that doesn’t stop reading flow, but they do look cool.

Lou

Took the recommendation and tried them out since I have been having cold toes the last couple winters. I do not ski with a wide stance and at 65 doubt I will change that so in 5 days they were pretty slashed up and I am sending them back. Seems like they need some edge resistant coverage on the between the boot side.