Glove Love - You Can Buy Happiness

Cold fingers? Must be winter then. So what do you need to bear in mind when shelling out for winter handwear. These are our top tips on buying gloves and mitts for the outdoors, starting with the big question:

Gloves or Mitts? The choice, as they say is yours. Mittens are inherently warmer than gloves because the plate-like formation of the finger exposes less surface area to raditate heat - individual fingers are like small diameter pipes, hard to insulate. For outright warmth you want mitts, however they have some drawbacks, particularly if you are a winter climber.

For starters, it's near impossible to tie knots, or manipulate hardware or clothing fastenings wearing mittens. In some cases, depending on the cut, it can even be difficult to hold an ice axe comfortably. In contrast, with well-fitting gloves, it's possible - with practice - to do pretty much anything you can manage with bare hands, though not as easy.

In our experience, mountaineering well into the sub-zeros, gloves are still better for active use. If your priority is simply keeping your hands as warm as possible and you can live with removing mitts for navigating etc, then mitts are the ways to go. It can also be a faff to get your fingers back into some gloves in cold conditions. Don't laugh, it happens.

Cut Buying hand wear is a little like buying boots - we all have different proportions between hands and fingers and different gloves are cut differently. Look for a non-tight fit, but with no excess material. Thumb fit is important for climbers because any loose material has a tendency to get trapped in carabiner gates, which is annoying. Pre-curved palms will make grasping ice tools or trekking poles more comfortable. If you use liners, try them under the gloves when you buy.

Length Gauntlet-types are great if you wear your gloves over the cuffs of your jacket (a stupid move in the wet) but shorter gloves fit better under jacket cuffs. If it's wet, you'll want your cuffs over the gloves, in snow it's personal choice, but if you intend to remove mitts or gloves for fiddling purposes, you'll prefer them to slide over the cuff.

Fastenings An adjustable cuff and possibly wrist fastening will make your life much easier and help keep the snow out. For climbing use, it's important that you can adjust them either one handed or using your teeth. Try it in the shop and make sure you can manage.

Construction Most serious winter gloves and mitts have some form of waterproof outer (usually achieved with a laminate insert) and a removable modular inner, which insulates your hands. Gloves, like many ski gloves, which have a non-removable insulating liner can take ages to dry. Last year's pile-lined MHW Ascent Glove, for example, could still be damp 24 hours after use - the latest version uses a different insulation and works much better.

With a modular glove you can remove the inner to dry it out separately, which is much quicker. You can also change the inner for different conditions.

Reinforcement Most technical gloves now feature some form of reinforcement on the palms and fingers of the glove. You need something that's grippy and non-absorbent. Leather may be okay in cold, dry conditions, but in Scotland it gets damp then freezes. A snot patch on the thumb can also be nice. The best reinforcements are also abrasion resistant, check the specs before buying - some will melt under the friction of a rope. Look for exposed stitching which will be abraded by rock or ice tools.

Insulation Fleece / pile or synthetic fillings are most commonly used. Down is okay in extreme cold dry conditions - Everest? - but hopeless for more general use. They will get damp either from rain or, more likely perspiration, so rapid drying is important. The thicker the filling, the more clumsy they'll feel.

Dachsteins Made from thick, pre-shrunken, wool, Dachstein mitts are astonishingly warm and wind resistant , in snowy condtions form a sort of shell of ice. Rather usefully, they stick to iced up rock and snow, low tech but surprisingly effective.

Inner Gloves Some mountaineers prefer to use a thin base-layer inner glove under the main glove or mitt. The over mitt can be slipped off and things manipulated with a thin inner. One problem is that these baselayer gloves can be quite slippy on metal, so you may even be better without and just rely on speed to stay warm.

Waterproofing Most winter gloves and mitts are now technically waterproof. Unfortunately the constant flexing and unflexing of hands and often imperfect seals at the wrist mean that in wet conditions you'll end up with damp hands sooner or later regardless. If you don't expect otherwise, you won't be disappointed, will you?

Security Remember those lengths of elastic mum used to connect your mitts with so they wouldn't get lost? You can do the same thing with shockcord and run them up each sleeve. It's probably better to tie a loop of shockcord onto each glove however, so you can slip them off and they'll hang from your wrists - take care with the size of the loop though, it's all too easy to get it too loose and see your glove plummeting into the abyss. Don't ask how I know, I just do. An alternative, with some shell jackets, is to clip your gloves to a plastic ring on the sleeve of the jacket. Which is fine until you want to wear your gloves without the jacket - yes, it does happen, particularly on glaciers. On balance the loops round the wrist are probably more versatile.

Windproof Fleece Straight fleece gloves have the wind resistance of a sieve, windproof fleece however, is much better and throws some water resistance into the equation too. Ideal for conditions where full winter gloves are just too warm. Some sort of grippy outer reinforcement on palm and fingers will make them more versatile, but be aware that even these will suffer if used directly on rock too frequently.

Knuckles If you insist on climbing vertical ice with a straight-shafted axe, your knuckles will, inevitably end up bruised unless you have superlative technique. Some mitts and gloves have reinforced knuckle sections to protect your fingers though arguably a better solution is to buy some bent shaft axes.

Any More Tips?

Just rendezvous with the forum thread below and let us know. Take your gloves off before starting to type thous or it';ll l;opok a bnit ;lokew thia.