Split Finger Gloves/Mittens for Hiking, Backpacking, & Mountaineering
(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!)
Balance in all things… including ‘balance,’ itself.
I find that I am far happier when I’m not being myopic about any one area of my life. It is difficult to climb at a hard (“hard” by my definition for myself) without putting considerable time and energy into the mental, physical, and technical preparation. My life depends on it, after all. It is also difficult to keep that level of preparation up indefinitely without alienating other responsibilities; you know, small things like being a husband, father, and son.
While that is a serious point, well worthy of deeper discussion, for the purposes of this video and this blog post, it is more of a jumping-off point. I was thinking of a few of my recent gear reviews:
… and now this video, while not on a specific model of equipment, it is a “review” of sorts of this style of equipment.
What they all have in common is a focus on a piece of gear that “finds a middle point” between two extremes. The Deuter Climber 22L is good at many different types of trips, from mountaineering to day hikes to short backpacking outings; but it isn’t the best pack for any one of these style of trips. The La Sportiva Ultra Raptor II Jr kind of splits the difference between approach shoes, hikers, and trail runners. Again, it can do all of these pretty well, but wouldn’t be as good as a “specialist” shoe at any one of these disciplines.
I believer - I know I’ve said it many times - that all gear has tradeoffs. So, I am a big believer in those specialized pieces of equipment when that task we need the gear for is pretty specific, too. Kind of the “right tool for the job” kind of idea. But in the mountains, if we brought the best tool for each job we’d have some many items on us that we’d be too weighed down to get anywhere.
So, given that no gear can be perfect for everything and that we need some gear that can do a lot of tasks well, I find that I end up with at the (seemingly inevitable) conclusion that some more “proficient at everything, master of nothing” items end up going a long way towards lightening my overall load when I get into complex trips that demand a lot of different things. It’s these “generalist” items that I turn to again and again.
While my particular version of split finger gloves, the ones I’ve been using for more than a decade, aren’t made any more. I do encourage you to check out the video and determine if some version of a split finger option is right for you. And in the newer models, I’ve had friends say a lot of good things about the Toko Thermo Split Mitt. In particular, they love how grippy the palm is, which is one of the things I like most about my old Giro brand, gloves.
Ice axes and ropes and tent flies and… get wet and cold. Holding on to them should be as easy as possible, that means having dexterity AND warmth to allow our fingers to function. Split finger gloves might provide just enough of both in many circumstances.