BootGlove = Warm Toes!

My boots tend to be a bit cold. Cold toes, but bearable when temps are in the teens ... painfully cold when temps drop into the single digits or lower. I'm not a fan of Hotronics or thicker socks or anything likely to screw with the fit, but warm toes would be nice, so ...

With temps forecast to a high of 4 at Stowe last Saturday, I picked up a pair of BootGloves to see if they helped keep the tootsies any warmer.

Pleasantly surprised to be able to ski all day with only a minor chill to the toes. The web site claims a 10 to 20 degree increase in temperature with the BootGloves on and this seems like a very realistic estimate.

BootGloves are made from a very heavy neoprene that wraps around the toe of the boot. A thin strap goes under the forefoot of the boot well behind where the binding engages the boot. A velcro belt wraps around the heel to secure the glove in place. There was no interference with the binding interface.

Only downside is that you won't be able to undo the lower buckles once the glove is on. I leave my boots buckled up once they're on, but those used to unbuckling in the lift line may find this a problem.

Overall a cheap, easy solution to cold toes without altering the fit characteristics of the boot.

A hearty for BootGloves!

More info at www.bootglove.com

Just wanted to point out that Hotronics do not affect fit. Bootgloves are good though. I wear them when it gets really cold with the Hotronics.

A lot of folks seem to think the Boot Glove is just too dorky to use but we all know the benefit of layering and the Boot Glove is the only way you can add insulation to a boot without impacting the fit at all. I don't think you will get a 20 degree improvement but it sure helps some, it does not interfere with performance and it doesn't cost much.
The cold footed ladies in my family all use epic's method with Hotronics PLUS Boot Glove on cold days.

As much as they help with they cold, they also help to keep the shell from getting stiff on cold days, keeping your boots easier to flex.

I'm secure enough with my own masculinity that I'm quite happy with dorky-looking ... but warm ... feet!

Besides, I always thought the Hotronics battery packs hanging off the back of the boot looked pretty geeky as well

I second this. My Langes are just on the verge of too narrow. Without the BG they kind of hurt. With them, no pain at all. I really think the 20 degree number is about right.

No one has said I'm dorky-looking, at least to my face (excluding spouse of course)

Nice!

Can I get "em in orange?

It was -24 C (-36 C wind chill) yesterday and my toes didn't freeze like they usually do. I did not do anything special for my feet, but I went an extra mile and wore snow pants. I also wore a fleece inside my jacket. If you keep your core warm, your toes and fingers will be warmer because your body doesn't try to conserve heat by shutting their circulation down.

Go ahead... call me a Gaper (which isn't fart from the truth), but none the less, I also wear Boot Gloves and Hotronics together. I find that neither one alone is magical, but together I feel like me feet are in the Spa...

I also use the hotronic/bootglove combo and endorse it. I don't think it looks dorky. Besides I'd rather look dorky on the hill, than cool in the lodge with frozen feet.

If you are out on a day that is cold enough to really need a boot glove then there won't be many others out there to tell you how dorky you look. Just my $.02.

You mean Technica Orange? I think you're going to have to settle for black ... although orange BootGloves would sure be stylin'

Hotronics and BootGlove user here.........mount the Hottronics on the front attached to front of Booster strap......out of the way and never ever hits the chair or gets lost........yeah it looks dorky but......so do helmets........which I never ski without...........

I ski Nordica Dobermann boots and can only fit a very thin sock in them. I don't give a sh!t what anyone says or how they look; they keep my digits from freezing on the coldest of days.

I have to add I was kind of skeptical on these things as well. I bought two pairs for me and my daughter. We used them this past weekend and they workedout great. If you're thinking of getting them do it!

My younger daughter and I wear Boot Gloves on subzero (F) days and they are adequate for what they are meant to do. My older daughter who has more of a circulatory issue uses them regularly (along with toe warmers and reflective foot board on colder days). On most days, she still finds herself taking warming break.

As a family who has been using Boot Gloves for many years, my opinion is that they definitely help but YMMV. They are just an insulation layer. They don't produce their own heat. So, so long as the heat the feet generate can keep up with heat lost, they will work fine. At the least, they slow down the heat transfer to the cold air.

In general use, they hardly work at all if they don't get put on indoors while the boots are warm.

Yes, I do agree the body would naturally try to keep up with the heat loss and keeping the core warm is extremely important. But, everyone's body functions differently, some not as effectively as others especially when it comes to supplying blood to extremities. In fact, I think your generalization is only valid for the minority, which does not include most ladies.

What if you put a footwarmer under the bootglove, and then another bootglove (larger size) over the whole thing?

If your feet don't stay warm after that they're not gonna stay warm.

I'm glad I saw this, because my daughter had trouble with her feet getting cold. Toewarmers do the trick, but you do get the occasional dud and we have to pop the boot off and try another one...and maybe drop $4 at the slope shop if I don't have a spare pack with me.
I found the BootGlove in small on Amazon for $24.99, and it qualified for the free shipping. I was 1 cent short, though, so I just had to buy a nice book for myself to save that money.

(would have bought the book at some point anyway...)
They didn't have any mediums, and the large ones were just a tad more expensive.

Hmm...I wore my boot gloves all this past week while up at Mt. Snow and Stratton. My boots are race plug, I have lined the underside of the footbed with aluminum foil, yet by 12pm my toes were painfully cold, to the point that even if I wasnt going to break for lunch I had to stop and warm up. My body was warm, but the toes and fingers were frozen.....more so the toes. I found that the bootgloves prolonged that time before I froze up, but after skiing in them for a while, snow actually got packed up behind them and may actually have contributed to me being cold, since it would allow for snow to be up against the boot all the time.....this is just a guess; a contradiction to my theory is that snow can actually act as insulation when compared to really bitter cold....temps went down to -6 and there were 40+mph winds.

I need to get some active heating going in these boots as others have. I had several runs in pain and wasted precious ski time warming up due to the bitter cold.

Get a pair of Intuition liners and your feet will stay warm.

the boot gloves work best if you put them on when your boots are warm

Heading out for a couple hours in the AM. I'll have the Hortonics on full blast and might even go for the ovrkill with the boot glove. Supposed to be really cold.

For me the toes have always been the problem. The heaters were well worth the expense and the new batteries appear to recharge and last longer .

If you wanna go for full overkill try the heater sandwich. Chemical toewarmers on top and hotronics below. Then wrap it up in the bootgloves.

....

Exactly hrstrat57.....sure would be interesting to see sales if they were also made in orange, flame red, lime green, or yellow...
*Will be in the Intuitions with em' overwrapping everything today...but the trees will do most of the work...

Looks like another great bunch of days coming up epic...

I have Tecnica XT17 racing boots (many will debate whether they are plugs or not - I don't care) with a very thin race liner. These boots were pretty cold in the 20-30 degree range. I was on a trip to Gore for a week and it was generally in the single digits to low teens that week. My feet were freezing. I ordered boot gloves from Artech and took them with me on a 2-day trip to Whiteface. The temps never got above zero for 2 days, and while my toes weren't toasty, they weren't unbearably cold. I now wear them all the time to help keep the snow out (there's almost no overlap on these boots). As stated they work best if you put them over warm boots. Ice and snow does build up around the edges and may even pack in under them if you find some powder but that's a bearable evil

ditto...

I'm in a Dobie 110. I could go to -10F with every other boot I've owned but these are a tad chilly below about 10F. I use the boot glove and they are fine.

CAVEAT,

They are worse then worthless if you shells are already cold and then you add the boot glove to try to warm back up.

Start with your shells and feet warm and the boot glove on before you go out.

1. Put your room-temperature boots on inside.
2. Leave them unbuckled for few minutes.
3. Buckle up.
4. Put on the boot glove.
5. Wait a few more minutes.
6. Go skiing.

No offense, but I don't see how you could beat chemical toe-warmers:

- No one can see them

- No battery hanging off your boot

- Don't block buckles

- Nothing else to "put on"

- Active heat

- Cheap (if you buy them ahead of time)

I pay less for my toe warmers each ski day than I pay for the granola bar I keep in my pack.

2 problems with chemical toe-warmers for me. There is no room for them inside my boot (it is a very tight fit). You also can't adjust the temp. as you can with the electronic warmers like the Hotronics.