In reply to Andy Hardy:
I know it's very funny and all that, but you don't cure frost bite with a heat pack! It wasn't really frost bitten I'm sure or he would have been in hospital, not amusing journos. I remember in one of my first winters in Helsinki doing a pretty epic XC ski around the city - in good winters there are ski tracks all over the place and you rarely have to take your skis off, maybe to cross the odd road, but most of the pedestrian bridges have ski tracks going over them so even that's rare. Anyway, I got a very cold end of the little fella'. All was fine by the next morning although it was an odd feeling. Particularly if you are skiing skate style, you are opening your legs which means basically, your crotch is pretty much exposed. A number of the Nordic brands do or did pants of different designs, made of base layer material but with windproof material on them too. I ended up buying light nylon windproof over trousers, TNF actually, which I used for many years after, normally over fleece trousers on cold days. That worked fine down to -20 or so. Obviously you wouldn't want to race in them though! Not very aero.
Post edited at 23:36