Gear Notes: Stay Extra Warm, Keep Your Feet Happy, See Where You've Skied (or Aspire to Ski)

Ski Resort Maps from Marmota Maps are one of four featured products today. Photo: Marmota Maps

Stay Extra Warm When Skiing and Snowboarding With the Torch Coat Heater

If you or your kids are chronically cold you might want to try an electric coat heater.

I’ve always been pretty skeptical of electric heaters. I’ve never liked boot heaters or heated insoles. I wasn’t sold on Columbia’s attempts at heated gloves and jackets.

But this season, I’ve used a Torch Coat Heater and I am sold. It’s very well-designed and provides steady heat for approximately four hours.

Adhesive velcro pads holds a “belt” with three hot pads inside your jacket. When you need heat, attach the battery to the pads and slip the battery into your pocket. Choose among three heat settings.

Three heating pads (just one is shown), attach by velcro to the inside of the jacket. Photo: Torch Coat Heater

The battery is USB compatible and can also be used to charge your phone.

I like the Torch Coat Heater for skiing, for winter biking, for hiking in the cold and I’ve even tucked it under a sweater and worn it in my home on a very cold evening, an experience, was both cozy and soothing!

Keep Your Feet Happy When Skiing and Snowboarding

Bombas Socks

Comfy socks make for happy feet. Knit of a medium weight wool blend, Bombas Ski and Snowboard socks make our feet happy.

We tried both the women’s and men’s Performance Ski and Snowboard Socks ($24 per pair). The socks are soft, have good cushioning in all the right spots and a feature called the “invistoe.”

A variety of Bombas Ski and Snowboard Socks, including those designed by Olympian Hannah Teter.

While I don’t really know what “invisitoe” is, I can tell you that all four of us (me, my husband and our sons) remarked that these socks have more room around the toes than normal, and that they don’t slide back, cramping your toes, when you put your ski boots on. If this is the “invisitoe” feature, we like it!

The best Bombas sock feature however, is one you can’t feel on your feet. Recognizing that socks are the most requested item in homeless shelters, Bombas donates one pair of socks (not necessarily ski socks, as they make all varieties of socks for men and women) for every pair purchased.

It’s two-for-the-price-of-one that does good in the world. And so far, Bombas has donated over 5 million pairs of socks.

Well done.

Drysure Extreme Snowboard and Ski Boot Dryer

To have warm feet, you must have dry feet. Drying out your boots after each ski day will prolong their life, keep them warmer (damp boots are cold) and prevent odor.

If you can’t find an outlet, or just want to be a bit more earth-friendly, check out these no electricity, no battery boot dryers from Drysure Extreme.

Drysure Extreme ski boot dryers are boot-shaped plastic inserts filled with a bag of absorbent beads. Slide them into your ski boots overnight and have dry warm feet the next day. Easily recharged (by the sun!) after about 10 uses. Photo: Drysure Extreme

Drysure Extreme boot dryers (they also make shoe dryers) absorb moisture when placed into damp ski or snowboard boots. Silica oxide beads draw moisture away from boot materials. The beads can absorb about ten days of sweat and moisture before needing to be recharged.

To recharge the beads, simply put the Drysure Extreme bead bags on a warm radiator, in direct sunlight or in an over at 100° C or 212° F for 1-2 hours.

For best results (and to prolong the life of the beads), store the boot dryers in a sealed plastic bag to prevent them from soaking up moisture from the air.

My son likes these so much, he took them away with him after Christmas break.

High praise, indeed.

Drysure Extreme has provided a 50% off coupon code (M8Y76V88) for purchases of Drysure Extreme made on Amazon. This code is good until the end of March. Drysure Extreme boot dryers are currently listed at $37.95. That makes half-price just about $19.00 US.

See Where You’ve Skied or Where You Aspire To Ski with Marmota Maps

The team at Marmota Maps has a self-proclaimed passion for “the Alps, design and geography.”

Based in Germany, Marmota Maps creates beautiful, data-driven maps of ski resorts in the Alps. A combination of professional mapping, including contour lines to show relief, prominent cities, roadways and riverways, and comprehensive ski resort data, Marmota Maps are highly descriptive. (To see map details, please visit the Marmota Maps website).

The smaller map of the Alps shows 275 ski resorts, while the larger Alpen map includes 630 ski resorts. Photo: Marmota Maps

This winter, Marmota Maps released a large-format map showing the Rocky Mountain ski resorts from Alaska southward to the US-Mexico border. This 3 foot x 4 foot map has even more information including data on population of each state and province relative to land mass and silhouettes of each state and province’s highest peak.

Marmota Maps Ski Resorts of the West large-format decorative map. Photo: Marmota Maps

Beautiful, informational and fun (you can order special stickers to keep track of the resorts where you’ve skied or snowboarded), we think these maps are perfect for college dorm rooms, kids’ bedrooms, and your ski house or condo.

In addition to maps, Marmota Maps offers beautiful prints of prominent North American mountains and postcards featuring North American species of Marmot.