My Glove Problem

Jen says I have a glove fetish. She thinks I buy gloves for the sake of buying gloves.

It’s true. I have a 66 qt. bin nearly full of gloves and mittens just for myself, but they all serve specific purposes.

The part she doesn’t understand, or the part I over complicate, is that with each thing you’re doing in different kinds of weather, you need different kinds of gloves.

So there are:

• mountain biking gloves
• road biking gloves
• camping gloves
• snowboard gloves
• work gloves
• motorcycle gloves
• emergency gloves

just to name a few, and yes some of them cross over between disciplines.

The trickiest conditions to have gloves for are the strenuous multi-day winter activities – climbing, hiking, camping. You need a glove that’s warm, breathable, durable and allows great dexterity of your fingers. In most cases this equals a two glove system – liner glove and shell. In most cases you end up sweating and soaking your glove system (which is at risk of freezing as the temps drop), so you almost need two sets of these systems per day that you’re out.

Ouch. That’s a lot of gloves.

Not to mention they get expensive. Even on sale at 50% or better you’re looking at $40+ for a pair of gloves.

No wonder she thinks I’m nuts.

Well, I think there’s a fix, or at least a cheaper alternative.

The last couple of years we’ve noticed our EMS guides all wearing a particular leather work glove. Finally this year we asked and got the info. The brand is Kinco. It’s a simple cloth backed, insulated, leather work glove they get, then waterproof, and voila you have a decent winter backwoods glove on the cheap ($15 on Amazon). The cloth back helps the glove breath – preventing too much sweat. The leather makes them durable. The waterproofing is your own doing with some heat and something like Sno-Seal.

Turns out this is quite popular all around. So popular one particular company is marketing what you can do yourself for $10 – $15 more. See it here.

But being cheap and having already spent too much on gloves, I decided to try it myself.

Mmmmmm. Noting like toasty gloves in the oven.

The trick is to get them warm, then apply the Sno-Seal so it literally melts into the leather.

I repeated this with 2 applications of Sno-Seal, then a final baking to insure a good seal.

How do they work? Don’t know and won’t know till next year. But hell for the price, it won’t really matter unless I get frostbite or something.

– b

ps. Yes. There’s an obvious dexterity issue with leather gloves and gadgets like cameras and GPS devices. Luckily (more like unfortunately) it hasn’t been as cold these past couple of years and taking your gloves off for a quick waypoint or picture isn’t as big a deal. As long as I can keep them on to put on or take off my crampons or clip caribiners, I should be ok.