Without a doubt your feet are one of the most important parts of your body when you’re out touring. Screw up your feet and you’ve screwed up your tour, usually. Your feet are your mode of travel, so you had better treat them well. This includes not only the appropriate footwear (boots), but also, well, the appropriate sockwear. I tend to bring a change of socks or two even when I’m otherwise packing “fast and light,” so socks are one of my favorite backcountry “luxury” items.
A lot of high-end snowboard and ski socks are essentially the same, following in the steps of the famed manufacturer, smartwool, whose socks can be found everywhere from your neighborhood kitchy gear shop to the closest big-box REI. Now, brands like Teko and Point 6 produce high-end, supposedly soft and supple socks which are, frankly, tough to tell apart from the smartwool brand socks at first glance. So, as you might guess, when I picked up a pair of Teko’s Merino Snowboard Socks at the beggining of this last season, I thought I was in for the same old-same old. Nonetheless, I needed a pair of socks, so I was happy to give ’em a spin.