The Gear That Makes Me Actually Enjoy Alpine Climbing

Several years ago, in the dead of winter, I skied into a random valley in the Canadian Rockies to alpine climb. At the time I had little money, was yet to be blessed with a gear-reviewing job, and had B-minus (at best) climbing tactics.

My partner Karl and I worked up quite the sweat breaking trail for six undulating miles that afternoon and stopped for the night below our intended route, a sweeping ridge of limestone and snow. I dug a cave in the shallow, faceted snowpack (we hadn’t brought a tent) while Karl melted snow to cook dinner. An hour later the cave was dug, the water boiled, and we squirmed into our hole for the night. It was -15°F, my socks were still soaked with sweat, and I foolishly thought that if I just kept my ski boots on inside my sleeping bag my feet would somehow stay warm throughout the night.

They did not.

By midnight, my feet were no longer warm. They got seriously cold at 2 a.m. and were frozen by 3. It was easy to keep track of my splits because I never fell asleep. By 5 a.m. it finally occurred to me that I should be worried. My feet had passed through pain to complete numbness—a sensation I’d read about but assumed I was too immortal to ever experience. So I slithered out of the snow cave to shake some life into them. I clipped into my skis and frantically skin-sprinted around our camp until I keeled over, sucking wind. It would be two whole days until I regained any sensation in my toes, and multiple years before they returned to normal.

• Related: Soloing Felt Easy and Fun. Then an Avalanche Broke the Reverie.

While I have made similarly dumb mistakes in the following years, I believe my footwear-tactics for alpine climbing have markedly improved thanks to mentorship, research, and climbing with professional alpinists. Nowadays, my footwear is lighter than it’s ever been before, my feet are consistently warmer and drier than they’ve ever been before, and my equipment is more versatile across a range of conditions and terrain. Here are a few of my hard-won tips, and my preferred pieces of gear.

Vapor Barrier Socks

From autumn to spring, I wear vapor barrier (VB) socks in the mountains nearly every day. VB socks are basically articulated garbage bags for your feet. They are waterproof and seam taped to prevent moisture from wicking off your feet and drenching your climbing boots. I think VB socks are absolutely mandatory for multi-day climbs—in winter, your boots will likely freeze overnight without them—but, truthfully, as a pretty sweaty person, I need them for any length of approach to keep my foot-moisture in check.

My main concern when first trying VBs was that my foot, wrapped in sickly plastic, would end up sitting in a pool of sweat. But I was pleased to learn that humans typically stop sweating in 100-percent humidity environments, and can confirm that even after a 20-hour push of skiing, hiking, and climbing in a VB sock, my foot is only minorly damp. VB socks have their place in the summer months, too: for long alpine rock climbs with glaciated approaches I’ll often opt for a light approach shoe instead of a waterproof mountaineering boot and employ the VB to keep my feet dry. (Some obvious caveats there, pick your mountain footwear wisely.)

To maximize comfort I wear an ultralight polypropylene sock next to skin, then the VBs, then a tall woolen sock. By sandwiching the VBs with less-slick sock materials I haven’t found foot slippage to be much of an issue. 

One note: Be sure to air out VB socks after each use—and wash them frequently—or prepare to endure an ungodly foot stank.

My pick: Rab Vapour Barrier Socks, $35, 80g/3oz

Heated Socks

Moisture management was the first step in gaining control of my foot warmth while alpine climbing, but there was plenty more to be done. Especially after frost-biting my toes in that damn snow cave, I realized I needed a mechanical advantage. Double boots while ice climbing helped greatly, but it was my friend Brette, a world-class alpinist with poor foot circulation, who truly opened my eyes. It was winter (again) in Canada, and Brette had just wrapped up a successful ice climbing trip during a particularly vicious cold snap. I was jealous. How on earth had she kept all her toes? 

“Heated socks,” she confided. 

“But what about foot sweat?” I asked, confirming that she didn’t use VBs. 

She smiled widely. “Then I just crank ‘em.”

Heated socks (like the ones I use, by Therm-ic) are simple tech: charge a pair of batteries with a wall plug-in, then snap the batteries to your sock and reap the warmth. Therm-ic’s socks have thin wires that creep behind the calf and beneath the foot, providing a low-key source of heat (three output levels to choose from) with minimal bulk. At the sock’s lowest setting the batteries can last for up to 16 hours, but I prefer to run them on medium or high and bring a spare set of batteries for longer days and overnight missions (wearing, as always, my VBs to manage any sweat).

Therm-ic heated socks are machine washable and have proven to be exceptionally durable, showing zero signs of wear after well over 100 miles of travel.

My pick: Therm-ic Sock Set UNI S-1200, $330, 250g/8.8oz with batteries

Lighter Crampon Heels

Alright, your feet are warm and dry and you are psyched to climb from dawn till dusk. For many climbers, comfortable feet is where the gear-thought ends and I commend them for shunning materialism. But I do not shun materialism for hard alpine climbing. In fact, when it comes to saving meaningful weight, I embrace it.

Look at the butt-shot photography of your favorite professional alpinist from the past few years and you may notice a trend: their crampon’s heel pieces are now aluminum. Such a franken-combination is easily achieved if you have an aluminum mountaineering crampon and a steep-ice crampon made by the same brand—simply slide out the steel heel piece and slot in the weight savings. I find Petzl’s “Alpen Adapt” system to be particularly slick in this scenario: taking the time-tested “Dart” front section and merging it with the freakishly light “Leopard” heels and, instead of a metal linking bar, a thin section of cord.

You’ll save 220 grams (7.7oz) in total with this configuration and have an easier time stuffing the crampons in your pack since you can now fold them lengthwise, a great help when on routes that require both technical ice and rock climbing. While 220g’s may not seem like a make-or-break amount of savings, consider the adage “one pound off your feet equals five pounds off your back”: with aluminum heels, you’ve effectively taken the weight of a liter of water out of your pack—or eleven No. 1 Ultralight cams.

The main drawback to this setup is that you no longer have a metal linking bar (no duh) and crampon fit is now of utmost importance. When installing the “Cord-Tec” be sure to hand tighten your fisherman’s knot as much as you can and then pick the absolute tightest length where you can still snap the heel bail in place. If the fixed heel-bail settings do not provide an appropriate fit, retie the fisherman’s knot and try again! I did not take this step seriously when first testing the Dart-Leopard hybrid, and became properly gripped on vertical ice when my crampon’s front section rotated 30 degrees outward like the foot of a duck. Yikes.

One last note: Petzl’s cord is extremely strong but (alas) it is still cord. Be wary of stepping on sharp rocks in these crampons, as a cord under tension is much easier to cut.  

My pick: Petzl Kit Cord-Tec (Dart front not included), $97, 120g/4.2oz

Climbing in Ski Boots (and Skiing in Climbing Boots)

In the Canadian Rockies, where I live, the vast majority of ice and alpine climbs are most efficiently approached in skis. There are two schools of thought for how best to ski in: (1) wear a lightweight pair of backcountry ski boots clipped to traditional pin bindings and carry your ice climbing boots on your pack or (2) locate a pair of the increasingly hard to find Silvretta 500 ski bindings, which clips in perfectly to the heel and toe bails of a climbing boot.

There are pros and cons to either setup. The main benefit of setup No. 1 is that stiff plastic ski boots enable you to easily approach and descend from the base of your climb. With a “real” ski setup, you can link powder turns all the way back to the valley floor. The downsides are, of course, the added weight of an extra pair of boots strapped to your pack, and the fact that you now need to transition from one pair of boots to the other twice in the day. But these transitions are more than just a time-suck: swapping warm boots for frozen ones in stormy, windy weather is truly unpleasant, especially at the end of a long day.

With these cons in mind, Silvretta bindings can appear to be the obvious choice. They are relatively light (1,620g/57.1oz per pair, require no extra set of boots), work well on the approach, and eliminate two footwear transitions. But they are not without fault. Namely, Silvrettas are no longer in production and those who own a pair can be hesitant to sell. (I bought mine from an older man who, back in the day, used Silvrettas as his primary backcountry-skiing binding and happily sold them for $50 not realizing what a treasure he possessed.) If you can find a pair (which is certainly doable, I bought a second pair for my partner just recently) there is an unfortunate reality you must confront: skiing powder in soft ice-climbing boots and a heavy climbing pack is very hard. There are ways, however, to add security by looping cordalette through a drilled hole in the tip of your ski and tensioning it back behind your knees to give the illusion of a stiff-ankled boot. I haven’t tried this myself, mainly out of a hesitation to drill a hole in my skis, but the option is out there. My preference is to keep my skins on for any downhill section steeper than 20 degrees and simply switch-back my way down the slope, making no effort to link hot-doggin’ turns.

Surprise, there’s a third option! Simply climb in those lightweight ski boots that provide so much security on the approach and descent. Such a suggestion will no doubt be offensive to some. Ski boots have historically been bulky and imprecise while climbing, something like firing your 5.12 sport proj in leather loafers. But I have recently been put on to the sleek ballerina boot that is the Scarpa F1 LT, an option that is 724g/25.5oz lighter than my go-to single boot (though not as warm). The F1 has a lot going for it: it has the most ankle dorsiflexion of any ski boot I’ve ever used, a BOA tightening system to lock down my heels, and a featherweight build (you know, there’s this adage about “a pound off your feet”…). I don’t think I’ll ever feel confident mixed or ice climbing at my limit wearing ski boots, but they are a worthy option for more moderate terrain. In fact, on steep and sticky blue ice, I found the F1s’ stiff, supportive platform to be reminiscent of old-school plastic climbing boots which helped to combat a surging calf pump.

My pick: Scarpa F1 LT, $900, 990g/34.9oz

Anthony Walsh is a digital editor at Climbing.

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