Reviews > Clothing > Socks > Ullfrotte Sport Socks > Roger Caffin > Field Report

Field Report - Ullfrotte Sport Socks
Roger Caffin

Product Information

Preamble

This BGT Test was advertised as being for the Sport socks, but Ullfrotte shipped both the Sport socks (quoted as being 400 g/m² (1.3 oz/sq ft)) and the heavier Wildlife socks (quoted as being 600 g/m² (2 oz/sq ft)). There was not a lot of difference between them (the full details are in my Initial Report) so I decided to test them both. While I had requested a 'middle' size Ullfrotte had shipped the 'large' size, but my initial reaction was that the large size would probably be OK.

Initial Impression

Very briefly, both socks have thick foot sections which did not look all that different, but the Sport socks had a thin ankle section while the Wilderness socks had a thick ankle section. The socks have Lycra in them so they tend to contract around my feet quite noticeably. The foot section is of uniform thickness, unlike the 'engineered' Thorlo socks my wife and I normally wear, and the extra bulk under the arch of my feet was one point of initial concern.

Testing

As ever, my basic test plan was to do lots of walking with the socks. During the field test period so far we have been doing lots of 2-day walks, nearly every weekend in fact. It has been uniformly dry for the test period (actually, we are in the third year of a drought), so my feet have been dry on most trips - except for the sweat of course. I have been wearing very light low-cut Australian footwear (Dunlop KT-26s, 650 g or 23 oz per pair) on these trips. They have a mesh top surface which lets a certain amount of dust through, so I often have rather grubby feet by the end of the day. However, I always wear some very thin (Wigwam Gobi) liner socks under the thick socks so my grubby feet should not be in contact with the Ullfrotte socks.

Assessments which I expected to be able to make so far include:

• Fit: is the initial shape of the sock a good approximation to my foot? Does the large size matter?
  The socks were largish, but the Lycra made them conform ('cling') quite nicely to my feet. Nonetheless, I think a medium size might have been a better idea.
• Stretch: do the socks stretch and conform nicely, or do they stretch and sag (does the Lycra work)?
  Hardly relevant as the socks are a little large. The Lycra seems to be doing a good job so far.
• Warmth: too hot or too cold?
  Well, I am conscious that these socks are 'warm'. But this does not seem to have mattered much. Perhaps the wool is doing a good job of soaking up any sweat from my feet. I have not had a chance so far to try them in the snow, but I would have very good expectations of them.
• Creasing: do the socks have any tendency to develop folds - which usually lead to blisters?
  If the socks were too large, or stretched during use, this could happen. However, I have seen little sign of it so far, and we have been fairly energetic at times. Once or twice I became aware that there was a crease under my foot when we started out, but a quick tug at the back seemed to fix that.
• Padding: what is the initial padding like, and how well does it cushion? Does the uniform thickness around my foot matter?
  I was conscious of the extra thickness under the arch of my foot for about half an hour on the first walk (big worry there for a while). But after that I did not notice it any more. I was conscious that the socks were nicely padded and that they were cushioning my feet.
• Felting and wear: it's going to happen with wool, but how much, how badly and where - how good is their fibre blend?
  This is an interesting point. We have walked fairly hard, and the socks have been washed each week, but so far I have not detected any significant felting. There is just a little bit of fuzzing around the toe and the heel. They are bearing up very well and look like lasting a long time.
• Smell: wool has a bad reputation: how bad is it with these? Do they get too hot?
  Since they have only been on 2-day walks so far, and were washed in between, they have not had much chance to develop a real smell. My feet are not especially sweaty, and the socks don't seem much hotter and more sweaty than my Thorlos. Perhaps it would be fair to say that they seem to smell no worse than my wool-blend Thorlo socks at the end of the day - a fairly subjective judgement to be sure.
• Washing: do the socks recover their spring when they are washed? Was a fabric conditioner useful?
  My wife uses a fabric conditioner after each wash for all our wool-blend socks, and so far the socks do seem to 'spring back' each time.
• Ankles: do the ankles stay up, or do they sag quickly?
  They stay up just fine.

The Unexpected

There is one negative feature of the socks which was unexpected, and that is the slippery inner and outer surfaces of the socks. The significance of this needs explaining. With the very light low-cut footwear I wear there is the potential for my foot to move around inside the shoe. It might be better explained if I said the sole of the shoe can seem to rotate around to the side of my foot when I am traversing steep slopes. I noticed this on one trip through country like that shown in the picture to the right. A stiff boot would not do this, and neither would a 'light' shoe with higher ankles. I had not noticed this with the Thorlos, but it was immediately very noticeable with these socks. I am fairly sure the slip is happening between the soft woolly inner surface of the Ullfrotte sock and the thin nylon liner sock I wear. Yes, this is a concern, as it means my footing is less secure on this sort of difficult terrain.

I had a closer look at the socks to see why this was happening. I think the explanation lies with the yarn used to make the socks, and I will try to explain this. Forgive me if some of this is self-evident. Yarn is made by spinning fibres together: a simple statement but it hides a lot of engineering today. Modern spinning machines have to blend different fibres together: the Ullfrotte Sport socks claim to have 65% wool and 35% nylon, but I assume there's a percent or two of Lycra in there as well as the cardboard sleeve mentions Lycra. Well, OK, but these are very different fibres with very different properties, and how they are spun together can be varied a lot. Just to make life even more complex, the terry piling on the inside is a wool/nylon blend, while the underlying structural web is straight nylon. Not your hand-knitted socks from Grandma by any means.

It seems that the yarn used in these socks has been spun so the ends of the wool fibres are not tightly constrained: they stick out from the yarn. When knitted up the effect is to give a slightly furry surface to the sock: the ends of the wool fibres lie on the surface. This gives the shopper an instant yummy impression of 'soft and warm and smooth'. By way of contrast, some other wool-blend socks I use have the ends of the wool fibres more encapsulated, and the surface seems rougher and has more friction. Anyhow, this instant yummy feel is nice, but it makes the sock more slippery. This is not so good in this sort of country.

The slippery surface became a real hazard on a trip through the country shown in the picture when my KT-26s decided to pack it in. The internal structural fabric near the front of the shoe and next to the bulge at the little toe tore, so the shoe really lost a lot of sideways stability. I then noticed really severe sideways slip or wobble while walking on (very) rough terrain for part of the day, and even on fairly flat terrain late in the afternoon near the end. A lot of this slip was doubtless due to the failure of the shoe structure, but I was left with a definite feeling that the slipperiness of the socks was contributing. I tried to compensate while walking, and this resulted in a rather sore ankle the next day (at home, fortunately). It would not be fair to blame the socks for all this problem: most of it was due to the shoe. However, people do walk and run barefoot, and I spend a fair bit of time barefoot at home, and the slipperiness was noticeable. I mention this incident because things like my shoe failing can happen on long trips, and I do like to have a little 'buffer capacity' in the performance of my gear.

Would I buy them?

This is hard to answer. For a start, I do not know the price. But I suspect the slipperiness might mean I would prefer other socks anyhow, even though these are otherwise very nice socks.

Reviewer Details

Reviewer:	Roger Caffin
Age:	58
Gender:	M
Weight:	64 kg (140 lb)
Height:	166 cm (65")
Shoe size:	42 Eu, 8 UK, not sure about USA
Email address:	r dot caffin at acm dot org
Location:	Sydney, NSW, Australia

Backpacking Background

I started bushwalking (the Australian term) when I was about 14 years old and took up rock climbing and remote exploration walking at University with the girl who became my wife. Later on we took up ski touring and canyoning. These days all our trips involve just the two of us. Over the last few years we have become converted to the concept of ultra-lightweight walking, and we have been cutting our total pack weights down from 18 - 20 kg (40 - 45 lb) each to about 12 kg (26 lb) each for week-long trips. That's not counting climbing rope or extra water for a dry camp - both happen. Our preferred walking trips in Australia are long ones: about a week in the general Blue Mts (east coast of Australia) and Snowy Mts (alpine region), and up to two months long in Europe and the UK. Ski touring trips would also typically last up to a week. We favour fairly hard trips and prefer to travel fast and light. Many of our trips are exploratory in wild country which sees few other walkers. In between these long trips we do some day walks, often exploring the start of longer trips. On average over the year we would spend at least two days per week walking or ski touring. The country we travel through is quite harsh, and this tends to be rough on our socks.

I am also the maintainer of the Australian aus.bushwalking FAQ web site www.bushwalking.org.au/FAQ/.

Reviews > Clothing > Socks > Ullfrotte Sport Socks > Roger Caffin > Field Report