The Best Ski Gloves

Buying Guide

When you’re out in the crisp, cold winter air, strapping on your skis for a day on the slopes, you have a few pieces of critical gear that you rely on to help you enjoy this wintry experience to its max. Ski gloves are one of these essential items that you simply have to have if you want to enjoy your skiing experience.

Ski gloves primarily keep your hands warm while you are skiing. The simple truth is that you’ll be moving quite fast on a pair of skis and the temperature of the air will rather cold! A pair of ski gloves will keep your fingers warm so you can use them to grip your ski poles and also for your general comfort. Your fingers are not well-insulated and if they start getting too cold, you’ll be the first person in your group to duck out and hit the lodge for hot cocoa.

Snow is made from water and there is a good chance that your ski gloves will be interacting with the snow during your ski session. Waterproof gloves are great at rejecting the water that wants to soak into the insulating layers inside the gloves, so keep an eye out for waterproof materials on the outer shell of your ski gloves.

Now that your fingers are dry and toasty, look a little further down to where your coat sleeve meets your gloves. This is where snow will try to get in and make your wrists and hands cold while you’re out in the powder. Gloves are designed to fight this in one of two ways. The first design is that the glove fits over your coat’s sleeve so your bare skin is covered and the snow has a much harder time getting all the way in where your wrist is. The second design is a glove that fits under your coat’s sleeve and the result is similar, the snow now has to work its way around two barriers and it’s not likely to do so. Either style of glove is good as long as it meshes well with your coat but you need to ensure that the glove is long enough to account for wrist protection in some way. A short glove that you might use for driving your car in the winter will likely be too short to protect your wrist when you’re skiing.

Cinch straps are awesome additions to ski gloves. You can cinch the wrist opening down to create a tight seal around your wrist and help keep snow out. The straps on a glove can also attach to many coat sleeves or even directly loop around your wrist. This gives you the benefit of being able to take your ski gloves off while you’re riding the lifts, which you might want to do if you’re getting a little too hot and want to cool off, or maybe you just really want to get that perfect lift selfie to share with your social media followers.

Speaking of using your touch-screen phones, there are many companies that account for this by creating the fingertips of their ski gloves out of a material that allows you to use your phone while still wearing the glove.

• Find the right size for your hands. Some companies have limited size offerings while others might have bigger and smaller sizes that you can opt for if your hands call for it.
• Waterproofing spray is an easy way to make sure your gloves will be waterproof.
• Thicker gloves limit your dexterity and what you can do with your fingers while wearing them, but they are generally cheaper due to the type of insulation they have inside.
• Thinner gloves with nicer technology inside can cost more money while still keeping your hands warm, but you’ll be able to use your hands more easily due to the smaller size.