Picking the right socks can be an art because he socks you chose to wear on a hiking or backpacking trip can make or break your experience. Socks have the magical power to gently swaddle and comfort your feet as you pound along on the trail for days on end, or to rub, chafe, blister, and generally allow you to devolve into foot-pain driven madness in a matter of hours. If you think I am joking about foot-pain driven madness, you have clearly been lucky enough to avoid such a fiasco, and I applaud you. I, however, have not been so fortunate.