SOCKS! I cant get it straight

I am getting back into backpacking recently as it has been nearly 10 years since I have gone. Fore reference I will be backpacking in the mounains of Virginia in the George Washington and Jefferson national forrests for starters. I have hit a snag in my selection of socks. It is my understanding that a person wants 2 socks (for the most part) one thin sock for the foot iself and another thicker sock for padding outside of that. In reasearching things I understand that the main concern is whether the sock is made from hydrophilic or hydrophobic fibers. If I am wearing a pair of Saloman Mission GTX light boots (my pack is about 20lbs) for a 3 day hike which socks should I lean toward for summer and winter wear? I currently have some poly/acrylic thick sports socks which will repel water nicely, should I combine those with some wool to add a wicking ingridient to the mix?

I haven't worn two pair of socks for hiking since the 70's. That is about when I started wearing running shoes for virtually all of my trail hiking. I did wear two pair of socks when I stopped to put on my climbing boots but that was mostly because I did a lot of ice and snow climbing. I now wear one pair of Smartwool light-weight or mid-weight socks with my trail running shoes. Sure my feet get wet on occasion but they generally dry quickly. I think you will find that trail runners and one pair of fairly light socks are the norm for people on this site.

Summer and winter are completely different beasts. The type of boots you have and whether your feet are prone to getting cold are also factors.

In the winter I personally wear a pair of poly liner socks and then a pair of wool socks over that. Wool is a very good insulator and continues to insulate when wet. My feet are prone to getting cold, so I like thick socks in the winter. I also wear Sorel Conquest Boots which provide a good degree of insulation. In the winter you do not want so much sock that your boots feel tight as that will cut of circulation and result in cold feet.

In the summer I normally only hike in a single pair of lighter synthetic socks. I normally wear trail running shoes as I like to pack light and move fast. If your feet are prone to blisters than a thin poly liner sock plus an outer synthetic sock might be a good idea.

The bottom line is to stay away from cotton.

For a three day backpacking trip in the summer then a couple of pairs of thin poly-pro sock liners and trail runners will suffice for most trips.

For a 3-day backpacking trip in the winter, then that is a completely different beast. I tend to get really cold feet and hands and thus it is not uncommon for me to wear two pair of liners plus a wool sock to keep my feet warm even when moving. I also wear a pair of Keen's Summit County Winter boots that are rated to -35. When I am in camp I also use down-boots to keep my feet warm when I am inactive.

In each case I will always bring one pair of "sacred" socks that I only use to sleep in and on wash days. That way I know I will always have one pair of clean, dry socks to wear during the night in my bag.

Thanks everyone. I normally can deel with cold feet. Around town I am a flip flop kind of guy. I will wear flip flops until temps reach the 30s. One the other hand, I cannot STAND wet feet. From what I have learned I think I will go with thin poly liner socks with wool on the outside in the winter and switch to just poly in the summer to keep breathability up.

Thanks again for all the input

The whole idea for the sock "liner" is to ensure that moisture is wicked away from your feet to keep them dry as possible. One thing for sure , if you trek any kind of distance and have wet feet, you are going to have a real problem with blisters, and blisters are no fun in the backcountry. I have in the past, taken some extra precautions as far as keeping my feet dry. Usually a couple of days before I leave, I start rubbing isopropol alcohol all over my feet. This keeps them nice and dry and the day before I leave I may even rub them down real good with deoderant of some kind, usually a roll on. This seems to work very well and has become important to me when I know that I will be trekking in the pouring rain for a while.. I hike on the AT and it can rain up there any time at all with no warning at all so I have just gotten into the habit of taking those extra precautions...sabre11004
P.S. Make sure that you take foot powder and you can keep them dry on the trail...

I usually do what others have said here. But I will add this. For the most part, my boots are not sock flexible. That means that for each pair of boots I have, there is a sock combination that works perfect and anything deviating from that combination doesn't. For my winter boots (gortex insulated Army issue) I wear a thin liner with a thick wool outer. If I wear just the thick wool, they hurt, if I wear a thicker inner and the wool, they hurt. If I wear just a thin, they flop around too much. My trail runners are much more sock flexible, but I never wear two socks with them.

My feet sweat, so there will always be a small amount of damp in my socks. I use Hydropel sometimes when I know I will be putting in the miles (more than 10/day). Have not used a second sock in a long time.

Another factor is conditioning. Walk/hike a lot and your feet will learn to tolerate the friction. That and a good pair of shoes that really fit, no blisters, no soreness.

What will give you blisters is heat plus wet plus friction. On a route with 10 creek crossings in about 75-80F temps, I started just wading through instead of bothering with water shoes. Water ran out of my trail runners like a sieve each time. I didn't get a single blister. My shoes fit me very well, and the cool dousing felt pretty good.

If you are wearing boots rather than trail runners, I would recommend a double sock even in the summer. There are two reasons for the classic wool outer sock, poly liner sock. One is moisture management. Poly wicks away from feet, wools provides insulation and buffering.

The second reason is that the typical boot doesn't give or conform to your foot, so when you are walking there is a bit of friction. The double sock typically puts the friction between the socks, rather than between your foot and the sock. [BTW: best to have the more textured part of the wool sock toward the outside of the boot, smooth facing inward which often means using wool socks turned inside out.]

--Mark

and I have several socks for different trails ~

I hike in only merina wool socks. I will tell a story about my son and a 50 miler Scout hike. The hike leader INSISTED that my son wear two sets of socks. Within the first two days, my son had several large and painful blisters. (No, it is not fun to have to comfort your son who you find weeping in the morning because his blisters hurt so much and he knows we have five more days.) I pulled parent priority and told the poor kid to wear only one pair of socks. The problem went away and he has now never worn two sets of socks again. FWIW

always wear a poly liner. wicks most of the moisture away, and I rarely get blisters. I'm not sure I've ever had a blister on the trail. They work THAT well for me. Wool sock as a 2nd layer. I believe 100%, high quality wool can absorb 60% of its weight before feeling damp to the touch. In other words, as the poly liner is pulling moisture away, the wool is soaking it up and slowly drying due to body heat. A dry foot is a happy foot.

I also wear a clean pair of poly liners when I go to bed, even in the summer months. A dry foot is a warm (or cool) foot.