After years of cold and/or wet hands I think I have finally cracked this one - I now have a pair of thinish flexible lightweight Sympatex "all weather" mitts which on their own are not very warm but with thin woolly or silk gloves as additional linings are lovely and cosy and I have not had cold or wet hands this winter........I carry spare gloves and on the one day the mitts got very damp I just changed the inner gloves and had warm hands again whilst all around me did not!

I've yet to try them out, but I recently bought a pair of Marmot 3 fingered Alpine/Ice climbing gloves (for forthecoming three days of snow 'n ice in Scotland).

They have 'proper' pile gloves as inners, and the outers are a sort of hybrid between mitts and gloves - you get your index finger and thumb 'free' and the other three fingers together.

I'm planning on using a pair of Gortex climbing gloves as inners instead of the pair provided (with the sticky pad thingy's) - then I can climb in the inners and put the outers on at belays to stop hot aches.

That's the theory, whether it'll work in practice....

Reckon the inner gloves might be a tad cool for climbing - they were in my experience. I just climb in full winter gloves over thin inners. If things get really fiddly, drop the outer glove onto its wrist loop, let it hang, sort out whatever it is, then get the outer back on.

Buffalo mitts are fantastic as spare / back-up mitts. Used to carry a pair in Scotland for walk-outs if my climbing gloves got wet and cold. The Buffalos are very light but still warm. The pile tends to lose its loft though and flatten out with use.

I tend to use gloves under a goretex mitt. If it's really cold then it'll be a thick pair of gloves otherwise it-ll be just a thin pair.

M