Stopping Lens Fogging: Hiking, Mountaineering, and Alpine Climbing in the Cold

(This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links and make a purchase, I’ll receive a small commission at no extra cost to you. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!)

What is your favorite piece of equipment? Is it that jacket that has just the right mix of insulation for how you generate heat? Is it your ice axe: forever ready and your indispensable mountain tool? Maybe it’s your boots, molding perfectly to your feet after the hard-won period of breaking them in.

Well, I think mine might be my AirTrim Mask.

Before I found my mask, winter climbing, for me, was full of either lung-busting pain or fogged glasses and goggles. See, heat exchange masts, of which the AirTrim is one, are designed to heat the air you breath in before it enters your lungs. For me, an asthmatic, that’s a big deal. “Cold Induced Asthma” is a real thing. As I talked about in my earlier short on heat exchange masks, cold air makes everyone’s bronchi and blood vessels constrict. Well, for a person with already inflamed bronchi - a person with asthma - that constriction can be debilitating. For me, it was a fire in my chest that just wouldn’t ease up coupled with the unease of never feeling like I had enough air, even at comparatively low elevations.

But I couldn’t put a mask on to heat that breathed in air, because every cold weather mask I tried ended up fogging up my glasses and goggles. So, breath or vision was my choice.

That was until, as I said in this attached video, I found the AirTrim. This has allowed me to protect my lungs and my vision at the same time. I use it pretty frequently, now, not just when I go up into the mountains. A cold winter camp? I have my mask. A winter morning run near my house? I have my mask. A super cold evening walking the dog? Mask is on.

It has made such a big difference to me on both of these critical fronts that it has truly opened winter up to me in a way it wasn’t, before.

You can find the AirTrim Heat Exchange Mask here

…and here are the "Racing" filters that allow for more airflow, necessary when working hard (moving uphill).