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I’ve skied with bootcaps twice in New England now. The first day was last Wednesday at Waterville.. it started in the teens and went to mid 30s throughout the day. Then yesterday at Sunday River, which went from 20s to 50 degrees, so doesn’t really count. Lol Since I had both bootcaps installed I decided to ski with one of my Hotronics batteries on and one off to compare what my feet felt like. For the most part I ski with my Hotronics almost every day of the season and in many cases could not ski without them. With them I am comfortable and without them my feet eventually turn into a block of ice and then I can’t feel with the bottom of my feet like I want to. I just have poor circulation in my extremities, and also use disposable hand warmers quite often in my mittens for this reason as well.
So on day 1 when I started skiing I could definitely tell a difference between my feet. The left had the battery powered heater on, and was very comfy all around, the right without my heater on was a little cooler (particularly I could feel that the top of my toes were warmer than underneath which is the opposite of how it usually goes for me) but not painful. The left foot eventually got so warm that I had to lower my battery setting to 1, that doesn’t really happen almost ever, it was to the point I thought my foot might start sweating as the day warmed up. Notably it was just as warm the previous day and I did NOT need to lower my battery settings at all. The right foot never required me to turn on my heater.. and these are not temperatures where I wouldn’t use my boot heaters even though it was mild in the afternoon. My right foot was plenty comfortable, but I am curious if it would have remained that way had it not warmed up as it did. Can’t answer that yet.
Yesterday I switched feet for which I had the heat on, just to change it up. Though I think my feet are equal opportunity icicles and don’t really have a bias between them. I only put the right side on level 1 since it was going to get so warm.. and I didn’t notice much of a difference between my two feet. I was very comfortable, as I should be at 50 degrees! Haha
I am looking forward to a colder day, that stays cold, to do a more thorough report. Not words I usually utter..but we are having way too warm of a winter for Maine! Currently my thought is that the caps are a great add on to other warming methods (for us exceptionally cold footed people) and that they definitely make a difference, especially to the top of the toes. This is notable since the Hotronics heaters only heat the underneath of your foot so I am impressed with how much warmer the top felt as this is usually where the heat loss is. I am however skeptical that I could forego my heaters altogether on a truly cold day in Maine with the caps alone, but I think the toe caps are going to be a much kore powerful add on than the bootgloves I use on especially cold/windy days. We’ll see. For someone who doesn’t usually need heating in their boots at all, but wants something to warm things up a little bit, this might be a fabulous singular option to try.
I’ll report back when we get an actual cold day here!
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