Boot heaters or heated insoles for ice climbing?

Anyone have experience modding their ice boots with some sort of boot heater? Or using a heated insole?

The wife loves ice climbing but gets painfully cold toes if it's below 40 degrees. Current boots are Scarpa Mont Blanc GTX. Yes, they're sized appropriately. Yes, her sock fit is dialed. Yes, she has a more insulative after-market insole. She just gets cold feet super easily.

Hoping some sort of heater option works before we have to shell out $$$ for double boots.

tell her to man up

They are not cheap (~ $190), but you should look at Thermacell Heated Insoles (www.thermacell.com)
They are wireless and rechargeable.

They might solve your problem.

I found my wife a pair of Lowa Civettas, yanked the boot liner out and fited them with an Intuition liner form fitted to her foot. Now her toes are cool but not cold.

A friend wears a pair of electric heated insoles inside his boots. They have a battery pack that straps to his leg. He says they work well. I could call him and find out the brand if you're interested.

Jon,
My wife has been in the same dilemma. She has really good fitting boots good aftermarket footbeds and wears the right socks but still gets cold feet. We have had limited success with chemical toe warmers. Sometimes they work awesome and sometimes we can't seem to get them to heat at all. I bought her Phantom 6000's but her feet are small enough that I am not sure they fit her well. I am also looking at going old school and doing a super gaiter on her leather boot. If you come up with any ideas I would love to her them. She loves ice but gets cold feet.
Dallen

Does anyone know of a company that makes smaller sized boots like a Scarpa phantom 6000 or similar?

Hotronics. They cost a couple hundred but are literally priceless to me. I can't recommend them enough.

I have had good results with throwing foot warmers in at the start of the day.

La Sportiva's new double is wicked light. I played around with one at the Bozeman Ice Fest this past weekend. It's called the G2 SM. If Sportiva fits, then it may be worth a try. As far as warmth goes, Sportiva lists it between the Oly Mons (Everest boot) and the Spantik. The G2 SM is above the Spantik on the warmth scale. Time will tell ...

Sunny-D wrote:Jon, My wife has been in the same dilemma. She has really good fitting boots good aftermarket footbeds and wears the right socks but still gets cold feet. We have had limited success with chemical toe warmers. Sometimes they work awesome and sometimes we can't seem to get them to heat at all. I bought her Phantom 6000's but her feet are small enough that I am not sure they fit her well. I am also looking at going old school and doing a super gaiter on her leather boot. If you come up with any ideas I would love to her them. She loves ice but gets cold feet. Dallen Does anyone know of a company that makes smaller sized boots like a Scarpa phantom 6000 or similar?

Foot/hand warmers need to be freshly purchased each season. They "go bad" fairly quickly if they sit around.

I'm a big fan of super gaiters. There's a new pair of Black Diamonds (a bit more insulation than the popular Wild Country super gaiters) in our local consignment shop. But they are size small. If your wife has really little boots - like maybe size 36 - they may fit. And they are a good bargain compared to new.

Adam Burch wrote:tell her to man up

The best heater I've seen in decades of skiing is the Hotronics version. I've used them and they're amazing and can easily be put in just about any boot.

hotronic.com/

That being said... cold feet are generally related to two issues, circulation (boot selection issue) or inadequate dress (clothing selection issue). It's fairly easy to narrow this down, overdress one day like wear all she's got and if she still has cold feet it's likely a boot issue. If they're plastic boots, see a boot fitter who can blow the boot out to restore circulation. If they are leather boots, see a boot fitter and get new boots. And of course if she piles on the layers and doesn't have cold feet then... there you go!

Or you could just throw money at the problem and not have to deal with the headache... I often find that people with cold hands and feet are resistant to put on more layers because they say my body is fine... why do I need another layer??? Its my hands that are cold...

Another cheap trick is just getting the packs that warm when exposed to oxygen but make sure you put them ontop of the toes not beneath them as the instrux tell you.

Morgan Patterson wrote: That being said... cold feet are generally related to two issues, circulation (boot selection issue) or inadequate dress (clothing selection issue).

With all due respect, Morgan, I believe your rules of thumb are generally more true for men. I really believe women's extremities respond differently for whatever reason regardless of boot fitting, layering, and so forth. I have struggled for years trying to find a way to keep my feet warm in every kind of boot I've ever used. I think a battery-powered insole is in my future eventually to end the suffering.

Aerili wrote: With all due respect, Morgan, I believe your rules of thumb are generally more true for men. I really believe women's extremities respond differently for whatever reason regardless of boot fitting, layering, and so forth. I have struggled for years trying to find a way to keep my feet warm in every kind of boot I've ever used. I think a battery-powered insole is in my future eventually to end the suffering.

Your experience mirrors my wife's. She just runs cold. Boots are fit properly, lots of layers, and it's not even that cold out (around 30-32) and her toes turn to blocks of ice.

I think Hotronics might be the next step. The Thermacells get a whole lot of shitty reviews yet cost almost as much as the Hotronics. Buy once, cry once...

Thanks to everyone who has weighed in thus far.

I think it has something to do with a woman's "pull blood to the core for self-preservation" switch being way more touchy than a man's, because she's wired to carry /protect a baby as well.

Just a guess, and another reason I'm glad I was born a man. It's so much easier for us - respect, ladies.

Aerili wrote: With all due respect, Morgan, I believe your rules of thumb are generally more true for men. I really believe women's extremities respond differently for whatever reason regardless of boot fitting, layering, and so forth. I have struggled for years trying to find a way to keep my feet warm in every kind of boot I've ever used. I think a battery-powered insole is in my future eventually to end the suffering.

I agree there are differences in men and women but its a matter of basic physiology (but I do like Burch's ref, and it wld make some sense if you were prego)... but the principal still stands, if your core has enough warmth it will focus on saving your limbs, of course that won't work if you have a circulation problem. Maybe you've just got poor circulation in your feet... but I wouldn't necessarily chock it up to women just get cold feet and there's nothing you can do. I think that's a sexist comment (even from a woman).

I won't lie though, I have a set of hottronics for my boots, but it's because I've got poor circulation from years of wearing racing boots. That being said I didn't install them last year (our coldest winter in decades) and I was out skiing in -10F. The difference was I finally found an incredible boot fitter who was able to really shape the boot so that my circulation issues were taken care of. . .

Also the question I would have is are you wearing ultralight socks? Might try switching to those as well (somewhat counter-intuitive).

First learned about Hotronics in the ski industry in the mid 90s. I bought a set for my wife. Time tested.

Morgan Patterson wrote: I agree there are differences in men and women but its a matter of basic physiology

There's a funny thing about physiology... it isn't cookie cutter. Gender, age, and even ethnicity all affect it (and many more things). Certainly women should consider all the things you listed (and some of us have) and no one ever said "there's nothing that can be done!", but your expectation that your solutions must result in an identical effect between sexes is simply a hypothesis.

io9.gizmodo.com/why-do-wome…
Some research reported in the above link seems to provide evidence to the contrary that "if you have more/enough warmth in your core then your extremities will by default become warmer" (clearly we are not talking about life threatening cold here). Women have been measured to have warmer core temps but colder extremity temps than men.

"In the cold, women generally have (1) less capability for maximum heat production by either exercise or shivering, (2) a more extensively vasoconstricted periphery, (3) lower foot, hand, and mean skin temperatures, (4) greater surface heat losses, especially from the geometrically thinner extremities, (5) increased rates of extremity, but not core, cooling, and (6) relatively greater risk of cold injury." from the journal article Sex Differences in Human Thermoregulatory Response to Heat and Cold Stress.

Anyhow, /thread drift

(wait til your next life, when you get a woman's body....;)

By the time, you buy things like Hotronics and get your boots custom molded, might as well buy 6000M boots like Spantiks, Baturas or Phantoms. My feet never got cold in Spantiks even in frigid NE (well maybe not this winter), but they do cold in Nepals (which according to a Sportiva rep just a tiny bit lighter than Spantiks).

doligo wrote:6000M boots like Spantiks, Baturas or Phantoms.

The Baturas are not equal to the Spantiks. Unless you were out for a run, the Baturas would really hurt at 6000m.

Buy proper winter boots? She is wearing what i would consider a 3.5 season boot, go for something like the batura (used down to -30) or if you don't think that would be good enough go for a double boot like the spantik (used on nanga parbat) or the G2 (used on gasherbrum 2 in the winter) so those are your two options from la sportiva way i see it you have one option if you wanted to stick with scarpa, phantom 6000.

Bud Martin wrote: The Baturas are not equal to the Spantiks. Unless you were out for a run, the Baturas would really hurt at 6000m.

I didn't know that. The LS reps and sales people always lead you to believe that they are as warm as Spantiks.