I’m an enormous advocate of layering with winter gloves and mittens. My go-to winter mixture is a fleece glove for heat and dexterity mixed with a water-proof/breathable mitten for heat and wind safety. The two insulate nicely when it’s chilly and the mitten shells are straightforward to take away if you happen to really feel your arms getting beginning to perspire. You may also regulate the diploma of heat by utilizing a thinner or thicker fleece glove.
The drawback is that winter gear producers don’t promote standalone, uninsulated waterproof/breathable mitten shells and in the event that they do, they insulate the shells or bundle them with Primaloft liners which are too heat to put on in aything besides probably the most excessive chilly.
That is except Ragged Mountain Equipment, a small cottage clothes producer in Glen, NH, simply exterior North Conway. They make a number of completely different grades of Gore-Tex mitten shells for a fraction of the worth of mainstream producers.
I lately bought a pair of the Ragged Mountain’s Gore-Tex Trail Mitts, that are barebones waterproof/breathable mittens shells which are excellent for winter climbing and solely value $19.50/pair! These are very primary mitten shells with Cordura palms for enhanced grip. They weigh simply 3 oz per pair and they’re 14″ lengthy in a measurement XL, in order that they lengthen well beyond your wrist and up your arm for higher warmth retention. The seams are usually not taped, however they’re tight sufficient to forestall snow from melting by means of. They don’t have fool cords or wire locks on the ends, however the again of the hand has an elastic collect to maintain them from flopping round.
When my arms get chilly, I pull these Trail Mitts over my fleece gloves to retain extra heat and stop the wind from chilling them. And vice versa if my arms really feel like their overheating and perspiring. The breathability is sort of good and I don’t really feel any perspiration buildup inside them once I’m working exhausting.
While Ragged Mountain Equipment makes actually distinctive clothes for hikers, skiers (XC, backcountry, and downhill), and climbers they’ve a sucky web site that doesn’t checklist a lot of the clothes or snowboarding gear they promote of their brick-and-mortar retailer. If you’re within the space although, I like to recommend stopping by and testing their males’s and ladies’s clothes in addition to these Trail Mitts. They’re a remarkably good worth and kind the idea for a extremely useful however comparatively cheap winter glove and mitten system.
Disclosure: The writer bought this product.