Keeping Your Feet Warm
how to avoid cold, numb or frozen feet while snowboarding

    Having cold feet while snowboarding sucks, plain and simple, especially when they go numb and you look like a fool trying to ride. Typically there is a pretty easy fix for keeping those toes nice and warm.

    It is usually not because it is cold outside that your feet are cold. Snowboard boots of this day and age typically consist of an outer boot and a thick inner liner. This is more then enough insulation that your feet should be warm even in the coldest of days.

    First of all make sure your socks don’t have wrinkles or kinks in them, especially on the top of your ankle. This is the most common problem. These kinks in your socks, when pressured by very tightly tied boots and very tight top binding straps, causes your circulation in your feet to slow down which is typically the cause of your cold feet. This can be pretty easily fixed by only using one sock and a snowboard specific sock at that (never a normal cotton sock or a really thick pair of wool socks that your grandma gave you for x-mas three years a go).

    A couple different companies make socks that have minimal material on the top of the ankle (sometimes called the bone out area), are designed to have forward lean and not bunch in the ankle and also have minimal material in the toe area. Burton makes a series of great snowboard specific socks called Forward Lean socks and these are my personal favorites and have kept my feet warm for years.

    Another easy trick for better circulation to your feet is loosen your straps a few clicks when you are on the lift. Of course don’t loosen your bindings to a point where you are close to loosing the board off the lift but just enough that you can slightly move your boot around inside the binding. This is where a leash comes in just in case you loosened them a little too much. Sometimes just having your bindings loose for a few minutes between each run is exactly what your feet need. Also resting your board on something (like your unstrapped foot) while on the lift helps too but be careful your edges don’t destroy your laces and the top of your boot (there is of course a way to fix this).

    Proper fitting snowboard boots are also essential. Make sure that the toe box leaves enough room to wiggle your toes but the boots are tight in the heel and around the back of the foot. So tight in fact that when you keep your foot flat on the ground and flex your knee forward your heel doesn’t lift off of the insole of the boot more then a quarter of an inch. If this is the case it is time to make those boots fit correctly, try putting in a heel wedge, getting better insoles, or for a quick fix wear two socks.

    Now, if for some crazy reason you need to wear two pairs of socks, make sure the inner most sock is very thin and made of a very light material such as silk or a silk weight material (Capaline by Patagonia is good stuff)

    Some sock materials are better then others to keep your feet warm snowboarding. Cotton is the worst, wool is okay, the light weight materials are good but a material called Outlast is awesome. Outlast is a fabric that regulates temperature, real space age stuff.

    You can also cheat of course and wear some of those battery powered socks but then you have to lug around the weight of those batteries as well. Another trick is to use custom or insulating insoles instead of the ones that came with the boots.

-Lakes

Reader Suggestion

    Wanted to help cure the stanky snowboard sock issue.
    Everyone who has parents that were around in the 50's and 60's should have a mom that knows this trick. When you wash your boarding socks, also winter hats, Under Armor and everything else that just never smells clean, throw like a half cup of Baking Soda in the wash with the clothes. You may have to put in more, I don't really measure, I just pour. Also, sometimes you need to set it in an extra rinse cycle cause not all the Baking Soda washes off. The point is that they smell fresh and clean again.
     Baking soda is amazing... not only does it de-stank anything, it can also clean tile grout and puts out grease fires. Just so you know, that's how you de-stank your socks...

-Catherine

Did we miss something? Do you have any suggestions for others?