Sea-to-Summit Alpine eVent Gaiters Review

Sea-to-Summit’s Alpine eVent Gaiters are high gaiters designed for winter hiking and snowshoeing. Hikers wear high gaiters in winter to keep snow from coming in over the top of their boots and soaking their socks. They also function as a wind layer around your lower legs and can provide protection from self-inflicted crampon strikes, which is common if you’re wearing sharp crampons and your aim is off because you’re fatigued.

Specs at a Glance

• Type: High gaiters
• 70D eVent waterproof, breathable laminate upper
• 1.5 in / 38mm hook and loop front opening
• Lower 900D boot section
• Replaceable hypalon underfoot strap
• 316 stainless steel lace hook

Breathability

If your calves sweat a lot while wearing gaiters from other manufacturers, you’ll notice an immediate difference with these Alpine eVent Gaiters. My lower pant legs and socks remain dry when I hike with these gaiters, which I find miraculous after sweating copiously for years with other gaiters.

I can’t be certain that the enhanced breathability is due to the use of the eVent waterproof breathable layer used in the upper half of the boot. It could also be due to the thickness of the nylon used to encase it, although the Gore-tex/nylon uppers on OR Crocodiles are the exact same thickness (70D). But at the end of the day, my lower legs and socks are dry when I wear these Sea-to-Summit gaiters, something I’d given up on experiencing previously.

Crampon Protection

Many high gaiters intended for winter use have an upper breathable half and a lower half made of a thicker and more puncture-resistant fabric to protect you against self-inflicted crampon strikes. While this is the case with these Alpine eVent Gaiters, the lower boot section is a 900D nylon and not the heavier 1000D Cordura fabric found on the beefier Sea-to-Summit Quagmire eVent Gaiter and OR Crocodiles. If you wear full crampons and not just microspikes or snowshoes, you might want to get a gaiter that has a thicker lower fabric for added protection.

No zippers

The Alpine eVent Gaiters close in front with a long strip of velcro, which is much better than a zipper because it will never break and you can close it while wearing gloves. It also lets you adjust the snugness of the fit around the circumference of your calves, depending on how you position the overlapping sides.

In addition, there is a snap closure at the bottom of the velcro which prevents it from peeling open at the bottom, which can happen during the course of the day if you’re snowshoeing in deep snow. There’s also a metal front hook that you can attach to a bootlace or gaiter hook if your boots have one at the base of your boot’s tongue.

Replaceable underfoot strap

The Alpine eVent Gaiters are designed for use with winter boots that have a heel arch that an underfoot strap can pass through. They have a very tough Hypalon strap that is anchored on one side with an adjustable buckle and on the other with a girth-hitched strap and a plastic loop that acts as a stopper to lock the girth hitch in place. If you break the Hypalon strap through wear and tear, you can replace it by purchasing a replacement strap and installing it by yourself, without any sewing. If you use high winter gaiters long enough or often enough, this kind of repair is inevitable.

If you wear OR Crocodile Gaiters, which are by far the most popular high winter used by winter hikers, you can’t replace the underfoot strap without a heavy-duty sewing machine that can penetrate the 1000D Cordura nylon that it’s sewn too. You can try sending them to OR to be repaired since they are guaranteed, but you might have to wait a few weeks before they’re returned.

Calf adjustment

These Alpine eVent Gaiters have an elastic cord and cord lock at the top of the gaiter that you cinch tight to keep the gaiters from collapsing upon themselves and falling. You don’t have to make it very tight because the bulge in the middle of your calf muscle is wider than the top.

The nice thing about this tightening system, besides its simplicity, is that you can tighten the top of the gaiter while wearing gloves. In addition, if you’re hiking through brush and want to prevent an excess cord from catching on vegetation, it’s simple to just stuff it down inside the gaiter.

Recommendation

I’ve tried a lot of other high gaiters over the years, but never found one that could prevent my calves from sweating profusely and soaking my socks. That is until I bought a pair of the Sea-to-Summit Alpine eVent Gaiters reviewed here. While breathability is one of the key reasons I’ve switched to these gaiters, I really like the fact that the underfoot strap is replaceable. I bought these Alpine gaiters on a whim, to try something different than my last pair of OR Crocodiles, which are deteriorating after a few years of use, and I’ve been very pleasantly surprised. Highly Recommended!

Disclosure: The author purchased these gaiters.

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