What winter socks would you recommend, best material for keeping feet warm?

Get some with the copper woven through them.

Attach a battery and you will have heated socks.

 

Poly wool blend are the best I've found. 86 the cotton. Once damp it never dries.

 

Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity. If nobody had mentioned flip flops I was going to go into a severe depression that I may have never been able to recover from.

 

Basic calf-high or full-length-tube wool socks are the best simple, cheap solution for winter socks.

Something else to consider. It doesn't matter what socks you have if your shoes do not breathe and allow moisture out. Moist feet are cold feet.

 

You ask an excellent question. I will reply based on a few decades experience field testing, designing, and using backcountry equipment.

First, DO NOT cut off circulation. You can buy the thickest, warmest pair of socks, but if they make your boots feel tight you are cutting off circulation. Don't do that. It's far better to buy slightly thinner socks that allow your feet to have free circulation.

Second, get liner socks. These are usually very thin, slick material that is a synthetic designed to wick moisture away from your skin. THEN put on your warm socks over that. Liner socks also greatly reduce the chance of developing blisters if you are on a long hike, as they will provide some "slide" between your warm socks and your boots.

Third, the warm socks. It used to be that 100% wool was the best bet. Now there are synthetics or synthetic blends. Be careful that you don't buy socks that have strong elastic in them. Remember, you want CIRCULATION more than anything. For anything but the coldest temperatures I use diabetic socks, with NO elastic in them, to provide the greatest circulation possible. I haven't yet found this option in thicker socks, so I go with 100% wool, or UP TO 5% elastic in the wool.

Fourth, your boots can become a source of wicking away heat. Do you use steel toed boots? If so, consider a carbon fiber toe instead. Steel will wick cold into your toes in a hurry. Many boots have either a 1/2 or 3/4 steel shank under your heel towards your foot. It's there to provide stability, but in extreme cold, if you have to stand on your feet for extended periods of time, cold will wick right through that steel shank and feel like it's burning the soles of your feet with cold. If you have room inside your boots, add a THIN layer of insulation as a foot bed. When climbing Denali our steel crampons were an obvious point of cold wicking. We wore insulated over boots, added 1/4" closed cell foam between the bottom of our boots and the crampons, and added 1/8" closed cell foam inside the bottom of our boots (which were a full size too big). Even in spite all that it was the closest I ever came to getting frostbite. When the snow is -45°F your feet are going to get chilled, no matter what. Just keep wiggling your toes and keep MOVING.

If you are doing something like chaining or securing a flatbed load in severe cold, keep extra insulated gloves and socks warming on the heat vents. Take breaks and swap them out. Nothing like the sting of thawing fingers when you pull on a pair of insulated gloves that have been baking on that heat vent.

 

I just paid 26 bucks for the same socks on ebay with free shipping.

 

Merino wool

 

Murdoch's - Big R sell a them.

 

The liners Lepton speaks of. Polypropylene....
They discovered the secret to wool. It’s the shape of the fibers. Matched it in very thin material.
I have heard silk is great. Doesn’t allow any air through.
They got some good choices for warm socks at Cabelas.
I tried to warm up steel toes with a battery. You don’t want to know.

 

Ive got insulated work boots that work very well. I wore them everyday last winter even up in -70 windchill minnesota and my feet wete never cold