Keep Kids Hands Warm for Winter Climbing, Hiking, & Camping: Glove Systems Learned from Ice Climbing
(This post may contain 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!)
The video goes through how I’ve taken a fairly common framework some ice climbers use to select multiple gloves to bring on a climb and then apply it to my kids. It’s an analogy, at best, but a handy one. But I’m not here to write everything in the video down into text, again. Watch the video, to get into the details.
And, If you are interested in the specific equipment my family was using in the video, here they are:
Kids gloves/mittens from on the video:
Adult gloves/mittens from the video:
Lenz Heat Glove 6.0 Finger Cap with Lithium Rechargeable Batteries and Chargers (cheaper versions are available but come without the batteries or battery chargers)
But there is always tangential points that are worth making. And when it comes to cold hands, there are lots of ways of points that are connected and relevant.
1) I don’t tend to buy expensive gloves for kids. Kids are constantly growing; and they (at least mine, anyway) are constantly losing them. The mittens, though, are an exception. If it’s cold enough to need mittens, it’s cold enough to have good ones that will actually protect my kids fingers from frostbite as they play in the wet snow and winter winds of our high country.
2) There are lots of ways to keep hands warm. Yes, having the right gloves/mittens is important, but there are also specific actions you can take to help get your hands restored after they’ve gotten cold. I actually did a short video on that specific topic, and you can find it, here.
3) And as a general rule, you often get cold hands for reasons that aren’t just about the quality of your gloves. There are other factors that impact your circulation and protection from the elements that end up impacting your hands and fingers. I did a full video and accompanying blog on those topics.
So, I’ve done quite a bit about cold hands and that’s because cold hands can lead to serious consequences. Of course, there are frostbite issues to contend with. But if you are doing technical work in cold environments, not being able to use your hands well could lead to other accidents that may prove to be more dangerous - to the point of life threatening.
Also, and this may be more pertinent for our kids, it’s just not fun to do stuff when you are uncomfortable or even in mild pain due to stinging hands. After all, we (supposedly) do this stuff because its fun!