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Are These 8 Useful Ski Accessories Essential?

Originally posted on Powder | By Izzy Lidsky | Last updated Mar 14, 2025 6:32 AM ET

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Certain things are essential to skiing. Obviously, you need skis, boots, and poles to just go skiing.

Then, there are things like waterproof outerwear, a good helmet and goggles that you could technically ski without, but if you ask anyone who skis regularly, they'd say you need them.

Beyond the obvious items, there are a lot of accessories that feel essential to skiing, but are they? Here are a few of those things, mostly for resort skiers, that might change your life or just might be kinda fun, but it's up to you to decide just how essential they really are.

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1. Heated Socks

Cold toes are one of the fastest ways to ruin a day of skiing, and there's no bigger bummer than having to call it quits on a pow day because of chilly feet. While ski boots that fit really well shouldn't cut off circulation or make your feet colder, sometimes that's not the case (or your boots just don't fit that well).

Heated socks are definitely not necessary, but can make all the difference. They usually come with a battery pack that attaches to or fits in the sock and has to be recharged. The battery packs are usually removable so you can still wash your socks. I wore heated socks just about every day for a season after I started getting bad bouts of chilblains (a non-freezing cold injury) on my toes, and as someone who spends a lot of time standing around in ski boots, they're pretty sick.

However, high-end heated socks can be $400+, and for something you don't need to go skiing with, that's a high price tag. There are lower-end ones, but they're kind of bulky and don't fit super well into a well-fitted ski boot. If you're banking on wearing them every day, that can also mean you only have one pair of good ski socks unless you want to shell out for multiple pairs. I'm not here to judge anyone for how often they wash their ski socks, but ... you do the math. You also have to remember to charge them. For some folks, that might not be a big deal, but it always felt like one more thing to remember for me.

2. Boot Heaters

Similar to heated socks, ski boot heaters can make a world of difference for folks who get cold toes. Ski boot heaters usually work by adding a thin heating element on top of your boot liner's insole that hooks up to a battery on the outside of your boot.

The beauty of boot heaters is that you can wear whatever socks you want with them, and they don't really change the fit of your boots. Some custom liners, like those from Surefoot, come with a battery-powered heating element built directly into the liner!

Like heated socks, good boot heaters will run you around $350. You do still have to charge the batteries and they definitely won't last all day on full blast, but on the upside, at least there's a higher likelihood your socks will be clean and your feet will be warm!

3. Aftermarket Ski Boot Liners

Like most of these items, I don't think there's a right or wrong answer to whether or not aftermarket liners are necessary. It really depends on the fit of your boots and your needs as a skier. However, I will say that the benefits of aftermarket liners almost certainly outweigh the downfalls.

There are three popular brands that make after-market liners: Intuition, Surefoot and Zipfit. Intuitions come in a variety of styles and thicknesses and are basically like a big foam sock that you can mold to your foot. According to master boot fitter George McConkey, Intuitions can make a boot fit your foot better if the shape of the stock liner isn't working for some reason.

The moldable foam can help fill in any weird gaps between the shell and your foot as well. Zipfit liners look a bit more like a traditional race boot liner and use an injectable cork to form to your foot. Similar to Intuitions, this cork can be used to fill out any gaps. Surefoot liners use a foam-injection process that accomplishes the same thing.

In general, most aftermarket liners will stiffen your boots up a little, which for most people, is a good thing. Wrap-style liners, like some of Intuitions, will do this to a larger degree. An aftermarket liner can also extend the life of your ski boot. Boot shells are made to last way longer than stock liners. So while you might pack out your stock liners in one season, if you put a new liner in, you can use the shells for many more years. Because they're made of foam, Intuitions do eventually wear out. Zipfits are made to just keep injecting cork into, so they typically last much longer. Surefoot liners are somewhere in the middle.

I've also found that my toes are always able to stay a bit warmer in the boots I've put Intuitions in.

Really, the only downside to aftermarket liners is that they're an added cost on top of an already expensive item. Intuitions are usually between $150-$200 and Zipfits are more like $500. So while you don't need them to go skiing, after-market liners are 100 percent worth the extra cost.

4. POV Cameras

Another polarizing subject is the POV Camera. Brands like GoPro and Insta360 are huge because everyone wants to post a sick video of themselves skiing pow to their Instagram. But do you really need one?

These kinds of cameras are great if say, you're a professional skier and your income depends on posting ski content or making ski films. I'd say sure, yeah, that's something you need. They can also be a great way to document the deepest day of your life or some cool line you skied on a trip the same way you would with an iPhone photo.

POV cams also allow you to watch yourself ski, so you can critique your own technique after the fact and maybe become a better skier. Lastly, they can offer educational purposes. A skier who was caught in a slide on Tuckerman Ravine shared the POV video to Mount Washington Avalanche Center to educate others on avalanches and terrain choices.

While there are obviously several good reasons to have one of these cameras ... I don't really think they're essential. Even as someone who works in ski media, I think they're kind of kooky (please don't come at me for saying that!), and I'd probably rather drop the $400–$500 they cost on something else that would enhance my ski experience more.

5. App Subscriptions

Subscription-based apps like OnX Backcountry and OpenSnow have become popular among skiers for their ability to provide lots of great information relevant to the sport.

OnX is a GPS app that has offline 3D mapping where you can overlay things like slope angle, avalanche paths, and slope aspect onto a map display. There are several other great mapping apps that are similar to OnX, like Outmap or Caltopo, but if you ask me (or our gear editor), OnX is the best option for backcountry ski navigation right now.

OpenSnow is a forecasting app that offers subscriptions for premium versions of the app. The platform has detailed, region-specific daily forecasts compiled by meteorologists, plus hourly snow and weather forecasts for resorts, map overlays that link to local avalanche forecasts, resort webcams in the app, and more.

There are a bunch of other subscription-based apps out there for skiers like Slopes, Windy, etc. Like most other things on this list, I'm gonna say this largely depends on your specific needs as a skier.

If you're skiing in the backcountry a lot, I'd say one of the GPS apps is necessary. Not getting lost is a pretty essential tool to staying safe, but if you're purely a resort skier, it's probably less crucial.

While skiers were finding pow before the days of OpenSnow, I will say I would be lost without this one. The detailed forecasts are so awesome for planning, whether it's just what time I'm headed to the mountain on a Saturday or for planning a bigger trip.

OpenSnow even has a widget you can install on the home screen of your iPhone, so I literally see the forecast every time I open my phone. Do I need it to ski? No. Am I a happier skier for it just about every day? Heck yeah.

6. Ski-Gee

Ski-Gees are little handheld goggle squeegees with a loop so you can put it on your thumb or your pole strap and have it accessible at any time to wipe fog and ice from your goggles.

Now that I live in the PNW, I can firmly say that the Ski-Gee is an essential piece of gear. It's true that there are some mountains where rime ice buildup on your goggles and freezing fog aren't as much of a concern and you'd probably only use one 1-2 days a year.

But pretty much anywhere in the PNW, Ski-Gees are the BOMB and make all the difference for visibility when you're skiing in a cloud. They're like $4. Not a lot to consider here except for how much easier you'll be able to see on a storm day with your Ski-Gee.

7. Sport Watches

Haven't you heard? The hottest summer accessory in mountain towns these days is a passionate watch tan in the shape of your favorite activity-tracking watch. Brands like Garmin, Suunto, COROS, and even the Apple Watch have become staples with mountain athletes of all types.

For skiing specifically, these watches are great for tracking fitness data and metrics for both backcountry and resort skiing. Some of these watches have modes for backcountry skiing where you can track both the uphill and downhill separately in terms of metrics and fitness levels and use it for navigation at the same time. You can also use ski modes on many of these watches to track your resort laps and see how much vert you're getting and how high your heart rate is while smashing moguls.

The Apple Watch specifically has a crash detection setting where it alerts local EMS if the watch detects impact. While the feature was made for car accidents, it's been known to help skiers in accidents as well.

Lots of these watches will also connect directly to a Strava account so you can upload data automatically and share just how much faster you are on your local bootpack than all your homies.

I wear the now-discontinued Garmin Forerunner 735XT, which I initially purchased for biking. This watch, in particular, doesn't have a ski mode, so I haven't found it super useful for skiing, except for when I've used the "run" mode to track a backcountry tour so I can save the route, but this is kind of a clunky way to do it.

I don't really use Strava, so using one of these as a resort skier doesn't really appeal to me for that reason. I do like that I get notifications from my phone to it so I can look and see why my phone is buzzing before I take a glove off and pull it out of my pocket while skiing.

While I don't think sport watches are necessary, they can certainly be a great tool for skiing and if you're a multi-sport athlete, it could definitely be a worthy investment for year round use.

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8. In-Helmet Speakers

There are several brands out there that make speakers or headphones designed to be directly integrated with your ski helmet.

Some of these products clip over the ear pads, and some are designed to go inside a little pocket in the ear pads of compatible helmets. I ski with music in just about every day and am one of those jerks who takes the ear pads out of my helmet.

I'm gonna be honest: I've never used these, nor do I know anyone who does. There are drawbacks to using a normal set of Bluetooth headphones with a ski helmet, like the possibility of losing an earbud, sound quality, temperature effects on the battery and so on, but honestly, I've never had enough of an issue to want to do anything different, let alone drop $50–$250 on a pair of headphones I can only use with my ski helmet.

Maybe if I tried a pair of these I'd be completely enlightened, but until then, I'm gonna say they're not really necessary. But hey, as long as you're not rocking a backpack speaker, you do you.

This article first appeared on Powder and was syndicated with permission.

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