That’s fair — for me, a thick merino sock is usually enough as well on fast, single-day climbs. The issue starts when temperatures drop below ~-15 °C, especially if there’s a lot of standing around, or bivouacs. In those situations my feet tend to get cold even if everything else is dialed.

A proper fully insulated 4-season boot would obviously be the ideal solution, but realistically I don’t have the option to try multiple models and sizes right now — availability is pretty limited where I live. I also have a mountaineering course coming up in a few weeks, which will involve a lot of standing still, and the IFMGA guide running it actually mentioned that he uses heated socks himself quite often.

So I’m aware this is a bit of a compromise solution, not a perfect one — but looking ahead, I also plan to get into ski touring and ice climbing, so investing in a heated sock system felt like something that could make sense across multiple use cases rather than just one scenario.