5 Reasons Men Over 55 Quit Buying Snow Boots And Bought These $40 Sleeves Instead

They Seal The Gap Snow Actually Gets In Through

Look at where they sit. Bottom hooks onto your bootlaces, wraps the whole boot upper, runs up to just below the knee, and cinches tight against your calf.

There's no opening anywhere for snow to find. Not at the boot collar, not at the pant hem, not at the tongue.

I've walked through drifts up to my shins and had nothing get in. One fellow in the reviews went out in two and a half feet of snow, intentionally wading through the deep stuff to test them, and said not one bit of snow got inside. Another did a field after a fourteen-inch dump — dry socks, dry boots.

And here's the part that saves you real money. Once the gap is sealed, you don't need snow boots. Your regular hiking boots or work boots become winter boots. A pair of these runs about forty bucks. A decent pair of pac boots is a hundred and eighty, and they sit in the closet eight months a year.

"These completely eliminate my need for snow boots in the winter. With these I can do any snow activity with just my hiking boots — and no need for snow pants either."

1000D Fabric. Crampon Spikes Haven't Punched Through Them.

The number 1000D is the denier of the fabric — it's the same weight of nylon they use on the bottom panels of serious packs. You can feel it the second you pick a pair up. It's stiff, it's heavy for what it is, and it doesn't feel like a rain poncho.

Why it matters: everything in winter that gets at your lower legs is sharp. Ice crust. Frozen brush. Stone. Your own boot lugs on the opposite ankle. Thin gaiters tear at the inner ankle first, every single time, because that's where you clip yourself walking.

These have a doubled reinforcement panel right there, plus bar-tack stitching on the stress points.

The test that convinced me came from a fellow who does actual mountaineering in these — he wears crampons over them and reported he hasn't been able to punch a hole in the fabric. If steel spikes on your own feet can't cut them, ice crust in your dooryard isn't going to.

Owners are on their sixth, seventh and eighth winter with the same pair. One woman said hers are going on eight years. Another said the neoprene on his Muck boots had torn, and putting these over top bought him at least another whole season out of the boots.

Front Velcro. On In The Driveway, Standing Up, With Gloves On.

This sounds like a small thing. It's the difference between owning them and never wearing them.

My first pair years back had a zipper up the side. To get them on you had to stand on one foot, bend your leg out at an angle no man my age should be attempting, and work a frozen zipper with cold fingers. I wore those maybe four times.

These close with a wide strip of hook-and-loop straight up the front. You set your boot down, wrap it, press. Ten seconds a leg. You can do it in gloves and you can do it standing at the tailgate.

There's a cinch strap with a plastic buckle at the top for your calf, and a small metal hook at the bottom that clips to your bootlaces so the whole thing can't creep up your leg.

Fellows in the reviews mention this exact comparison — the front-and-center velcro versus the side zipper they had before, and how much easier it is to get on without contorting yourself.

The Strap Under Your Boot Is Where Cheap Gaiters Die

Turn a pair over and look at the strap that runs under the arch of your boot. That one part decides whether they last one winter or six.

On cheap gaiters it's a thin nylon cord with a plastic snap. It wears through on pavement, or the buckle gives up in the cold and lets go, and now you've got a gaiter riding up your shin with the bottom flapping loose.

These use a thick TPU band — the rubbery stuff, not fabric — with a metal pin buckle. Set it once and it stays. Cold doesn't make it brittle. Grit doesn't saw through it.

A guy who runs snowcats four days a week in Colorado bought these because he thought he'd lost his $80 pair. He found the expensive ones a day later and now those are the backup — he wears these instead.

And here's a detail worth knowing if you use ice cleats: the strap will run either over or under your spikes. Owners run them together all winter. The two things aren't fighting each other.

Snow Is Just Where It Starts. Mine Come Out In July.

I bought them for snow. Here's what they've actually done since.

Weed eating. This is the one that surprised me. Trimming along a fence line, everything the string throws comes straight at your ankles — stickers, goat heads, cuckleburs, thorn bits. All of it used to end up down in my socks. Now it bounces off nylon and I dust it off standing up.

Wet tall grass. Walking a field line in the morning, your boots and pant legs used to be soaked by the time you got to the far side.

Mud season. Which up here is a real season with a name.

Ticks. Several owners in high-Lyme areas wear these specifically for that — one sprays permethrin on the fabric and says it's the reason she stops worrying about it.

Read the reviews and you'll find men wearing them for elk hunts in cactus country, desert off-trail hiking, and — a use I didn't see coming — riding a motorcycle in cold weather, because they cut the wind that otherwise runs straight down into your boots.

I bought them for four months and I get about nine.