The key to warm hands in the winter

This is my first post of more to come on winter warmth. The first key to being outside and having fun in the winter (or survival in the winter) is to have the right clothing and layers. 

It took me many years of testing gear, trial and error, and freezing my butt off to get to the point of finally having the right kind of cold-weather clothing and gear to thrive in winter. So I'm here to share with you one of my success findings to keeping your hands warm. Cold hands make it difficult to use your valuable fingers. Don't have cold hands... get-chya some mittens!

The problem with gloves is that they keep all your fingers separate from each other and thus each finger must provide its own heat to warm it. While gloves may be great for dexterity they have got to be pretty thick to hold in enough warmth, which then takes away from all that dexterity.

Here's the mittens that I use.

These were made by my wife. The outer (on the right in brown) are made from shrunk wool sweaters so that they are thick and tough.

The inner liner (on the left in camo) are made from fleece.


The great benefit of mittens is that it keeps your fingers together so they can generate more heat and warm each other up.

When put together this combination has always kept my hands warm. Not only that but I've had hot and sweaty hands when it's 20 degrees outside! 
This means that when it comes time to use my fingers I have no problem having them out in the cold for several minutes before I even begin to feel the winter chill.

I know, kids don't like mittens and a lot of grown-ups don't either. They don't look cool... in fact, these look like big oven mitts. You just gotta embrace the humor of their "look" and trust me, your friends will be asking to borrow them. You can even loan them out to the skeptics and watch how quickly they "ooh" and "ahh" at their comfy warm hands.

Gloves:

Now sometimes I will use gloves, especially when it's above freezing outside. In this case here's one combination that I like:

Rag wool fingerless gloves. The black dots you see are to help with grip in the palm. These gloves retain heat in your wrist and palm quite well while still allowing your fingers to be fully utilized.

Do kids like fingerless gloves? Well as one teen recently put it, "they look really cool!" I agree. So yes, they pass the cool test.


Sometimes I'll wear a light glove liner underneath to keep my fingers warm. 



So there you have it.  Keep those dogs warm out there (your fingers) and enjoy the winter. When you have the right layers the winter can be really awesome because you don't have to worry about insects, spiders, mosquitos, snakes, or heat stroke.

Read about the "Best Winter Footwear I Have Ever Used" here