16 Best Ski Gloves & Mittens of 2024 | Heated & War (2024)

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Buyer’s Guide

Factors to Consider

Warmth

Staying warm on the slopes is obviously one of the main components in a great pair of ski gloves. Regardless of your skill as a skier or how often you go out, keeping your hands and fingers protected from frostbite and general exposure is going to make your experience much more pleasant.

Factors that influence warmth include the type and amount of insulation used, glove liners, and accessory features like hand warmer pockets.

Heated Gloves

Some people with circulation issues, or those who live in particularly cold climates, or work outside in an industry that involves a lot of standing around in the chill might be interested in a pair of heated gloves.

While heated models like the Outdoor Research Prevail provide an excellent external source of heat for hands in need, they come with their own set of logistical issues and offer way less mobility than the alternatives. The most effective models tend to be outrageously expensive. For shorter ski trips, you may be better served by grabbing a more reasonably priced pair of gloves paired with a healthy stock of chemical hand warmers.

Water Resistance

Wet hands are cold hands, and gloves that don’t keep out water won’t do you much good in freezing temperatures. The water resistance of your gloves is influenced by their shell materials, and in high quality gloves the inclusion of a Gore Tex (or equivalent) waterproof membrane.

Generally speaking, synthetic gloves are more water resistant than leather gloves, though this isn’t always the case when dealing with budget models.

Breathability

Skiing is hard work, and your body will respond accordingly as you build up internal heat while charging down the slopes. Often ski gloves will either be waterproof, or they’ll be breathable. You’re less likely to run into this issue with high-end gloves, but ultimately one must reckon with the unappealing choice between wetness and “sweat”-ness.

Breathability is particularly important for the purposes of spring skiing or touring, but wet hands ultimately lead to cold hands regardless of the kind of skiing you do. Technical inserts found in models like Burton’s Gore-Tex Gloves strike a reasonable balance for a fiscal premium. The most breathable gloves are fleece glove liners that you can wear separately from a shell, or softshell gloves made specifically for touring or cold weather endurance sports.

Durability

Skiing is a sport filled with sharp edges, abrasive surfaces, and high impact forces. Naturally these factors take a toll on your gear, with soft goods like gloves being particularly vulnerable. With a few notable exceptions, there’s a strong correlation between price tag and durability in ski gloves.

Budget gloves might get you out on the slope for a week long ski trip- but don’t count on them for repeat seasons. As a final note, leather gloves tend to hold up a bit better than synthetic gloves, especially on the lower end of the price spectrum.

Dexterity

Working zippers, snapping buckles, and other fine motor talks are much more difficult through the bulk of ski gloves. Your dexterity needs are influenced both by the kind of skiing you do and the people you ski with. Those anticipating frequently needing to do things like adjust boot buckles, open vents on your jacket, tie knots, or wrangle children might be better served by a thinner, more flexible option.

If you’re worried about being cold on the slopes, you might want to opt for a thicker, more insulated pair of mittens. Relative dexterity is one of the major differences between gloves and mittens. A pair of gloves will always be easier to move around in than mittens with a similar amount of insulation.

Sizing

As is the case with most insulative outdoor goods, gloves work better if they’re properly sized for your hands. Too big, and warm air can escape through gaps in the cuff, and the dead air space around your hands takes longer to warm up. If they’re too small, you’ll compress the insulation and your gloves won’t be as effective.

Unfortunately there’s no standardized sizing guide for ski gloves. For example, I wear a large in the Army Leather Extreme Mitt, but know I’d be more comfortable in an XL of the Black Diamond Guide Glove. The good news is you have a pretty wide window in which your gloves will be effective. If you’re set on ordering gloves online, chances are you can dependably guess what size works best for you.

Gloves vs. Mittens

We get it, decisions are hard. Particularly when you’re potentially dropping a couple hundred dollars on gear that seems like an afterthought after big ticket items like skis. The good news is there’s no right answer and you can easily make a decision by asking yourself one question- “How much do I need to use my hands?”

If you anticipate fiddling with zippers, wiping your kid’s nose, or doing any of the requisite dexterity-related tasks necessary for skiing out of bounds; gloves are probably the way to go. It’s a little difficult to efficiently root around in pockets while wearing insulated gloves. Imagine trying to fish a cough drop out of your snow pants with your hands encased in clunky nylon lobster claws.

With this said, mittens are considerably warmer than gloves. If you’re consistently struggling with cold fingers there’s a compelling case for investing in a burly, heavily insulated mitten. Though you may be working with the relative dexterity of an oven mitt, a good pair of mittens effectively function like a sleeping bag for your hands- keeping everything tucked together for the most warmth for the insulation.

Three finger gloves represent a tenuous middle ground between our two extremes. They’re mittens with a separated index finger so you have a little more pinch and fiddle ability, with more warmth than your garden variety glove. While your lone finger might get a little chilly, it’s useful for tasks you’ll do frequently like unstrapping your snowboard bindings or pointing at the guy backflipping off the cattrack.

Many other factors influence how warm and adroit your hands might be during a day of skiing. If you love gloves or are smitten by mittens, there’s plenty of ways to get a warmer glove and a more flexible mitten. This is influenced by the materials of the shell as well as the amount and type of insulation used.

Ski Glove Anatomy

Shell Materials

The foundation of every good pair of gloves is the shell. Without a solid barrier protecting your hands from wind, wetness, and the many pointy things on a ski hill; insulation isn’t going to do much good. Manufacturers either use leather, synthetic components, or a combination of the two.

Leather

Everyone looks better in leather. But style points aside, leather gloves are more flexible, more durable, and have better traction than their synthetic counterparts. I’ve tried dozens of different kinds of ski gloves but still head out to the ski hill in a cheap pair of leather Kincos on all but the wettest days.

Most pairs of leather gloves are pretty tough with comparably good grip. This is quite the desirable set of circ*mstances in a sport with as many sharp edges and slippery surfaces as skiing. I’ve seen many pairs of gloves mangled by tow-ropes, and falls on stairs that could have been prevented by a firmer grip on a handrail.

The biggest downside of leather gloves is requisite maintenance. Leather gloves need semi-regular treatment with a conditioner to stay flexible and water resistant. I say water resistant because wet snowfall or rain will almost certainly soak through even the fanciest pair after a full day of skiing.

Synthetic

Synthetic shells are better represented on ski slopes for a few reasons. First and foremost, they’re typically more weather proof, providing skiers with more protection against wind and especially water when the weather turns nasty. They also tend to be more affordable and with more entry level options available with some notable exceptions.

Synthetic gloves, particularly budget models made from polyester, are prone to wear and tear. This can be a bummer for newer skiers who realize their new gloves were mulched by the bunny hill rope tow in a single day of skiing. In many cases it’s worth investing a little more in a nylon model that can hold up to the hazards of the hill a little bit better.

High end synthetic ski gloves often incorporate some leather around the palms and fingers. This helps mitigate some of the issues with dexterity, grip, and durability you’d run into with budget models.

There’s a compelling case for every kind of shell, be the reasons based around budget, durability, or warmth. But the shellis just one of the ingredients of a pair of gloves. Insulation and inserts work together with the outer material to keep you warm and dry while you’re ripping turns.

Fills and Liners

A roof might keep your house dry, but effective insulation is key to keeping you warm through winter months. Ski gloves are packed with insulation similar to an attic crawlspace, and it’s the fill that keeps your hands safe from encroaching cold through the course of a ski day.

There many proprietary fills used by different manufacturers to trap the heat your hands naturally generate; largely speaking their degree of warmth has more to do with the amount of fill used than the specific house blend (note that there is an industry bias towards Primaloft in the same way there would be towards Advil versus generic aspirin). There are also some outliers like the Burton Oven Mitt which uses a combination of synthetic fill and down.

In addition to whatever insulation is employed, most gloves have a built in liner for additional warmth and comfort. Fleece is usually the material of choice here.

Removable Liners

High-end gloves sometimes feature a removable liner. This allows you to remove the shell of your gloves and wash them without worrying about damaging more heat sensitive components. In some cases these liners are more of a second, super lightweight pair of gloves worn under your shell. These liners often include touchscreen compatible finger tips, and can alternatively be worn alone in warm weather.

Inserts

High-end ski gloves often employ the tried and true hero of the outdoor industry, Gore-Tex (or one of its many brand-specific cousins), in order to aid in waterproofing and breathability. Breathable, waterproof membranes are the standard for technical outdoor equipment- and it’s great to have a layer that not only reinforces the waterproof aspects of your glove’s shell, but allows built up moisture to escape when your mitts inevitably get a little sweaty.

You don’t necessarily need a pair of gloves with a technical membrane, but it certainly helps if you’re skiing in particularly cold or wet conditions. I mentioned above that I normally take my cheap leather gloves out most days. When I’m not wearing those, I have a pair of trusted Hestra mittens that have kept me warm and dry in the most heinous of weather conditions.

Cuffs

Ski glove cuffs prevent snow from slipping into your hands or up your sleeves. I can’t count the times I’ve forlornly shaken snow out of my gloves after taking a good sliding fall, or after pulling myself out of a bomb crater on a powder day. Like with all the other factors we’ve discussed, the best style of cuff for you is informed by the kind of skiing you do and your warmth preferences.

Cuffs come in one of two styles: a gauntlet that fits over the sleeve of your jacket, or a more subdued undercuff worn under your sleeves. Gauntlets are certainly the warmer your options, and they have the obvious appearance of more heavy duty hand protection- more akin to something you’d wear in space or into medieval battlefields than the ski slope. It’s much more difficult for snow to worm its way into the inner sanctum of your gloves.

With these appreciable benefits in mind, why would you choose an undercuff? Typically undercuff style gloves are more compact, are easier to take off, and offer much more dexterity than beefed up gauntlet gloves. In my case, I like to rely on moving in order to keep warm, so I value the ability to make adjustments on the fly without the bulk of a big glove bogging me down.

As a final consideration, undercuff style gloves tend to be lighter on features and accessories by necessity of their trimmed-down build.

Features

Feature-bloat is a very real phenomena in the outdoor industry, and ski gloves are no exception. It’s easy to conflate products with lots of cheap, tacked-on features with actual quality. While I have a clear bias towards simplicity and utility, there are a few crucial quality of life features for gloves like leashes and goggle wipes.

Hand Warmer Pockets

For those with perennially chilly fingers, hand warmer pockets can be a quick fix. I see a lot of these pockets on mid-tier gloves like the Burton Gore-Tex models above. Hand warmers are a great way to stay warm if you’re worried about ruining your ski trip. If you anticipate spending more than 10 days a season on the slopes, it’s probably worth investing in a nicer pair of gloves rather than burning through dozens of disposable warmers.

The other issues that I see with these zippered pockets is they leak. If moisture is going to seep into your gloves, it’s going to happen first through your zippered hand warmer pockets.

Leash

As someone who’s watched their glove rocket down a steep, springtime slope that I just spent a few hours climbing up, I can attest to the benefits of leashes. At the risk of sounding pedantic, these “leashes” keep you from dropping your gloves if you need to take them off.

When I taught ski lessons, leashes were a godsend that allowed me to wipe away tears, distribute snacks, and deal with countless zipper fiascos with the benefit of bare hands. They’re particularly useful for gauntleted gloves, where limits of your dexterity are exaggerated by bulk.

Wrist Cinch

A wrist cinch works in tandem with your cuff to keep snow out of your gloves.They’re a near ubiquitous feature in gloves nowadays, and function in the same way and for the same purpose as any other cinch in any other piece of outdoor gear. It’s just another way to batten down the hatches and keep dry when the snow rolls in.

Nose Wipes

The bottom line is your nose will run while you’re skiing. If you’re hopelessly congested like me, your nose will run quite a bit. Though this problem can be remedied by carrying a pack of tissues with you on the slopes, that requires you getting into your pockets and storing the snotty tissues with your all day

Soft felt nose wipes on the back of your gloves offer a compelling alternative to chafing your septum on the rough and slick outer shell.. Better to let the mucus freeze to a semi-absorbent surface and give yourself permission to forget about it. I wouldn’t consider this a dealbreaker feature by any means, but it’s a nice addition and might make you much more comfortable in the long run.

Touch Screen Compatibility

Walkie talkies and two way radios are by far the best for outdoor adventures and communicating on complicated and often signal-sparse ski slopes. For most of us skiing inbounds, a cell phone is the primary way we communicate with our ski partners. My experience with touch screen compatible gloves is mixed- some require an unreasonable degree of finesse to coax into working, and some work reasonably well even when my gloves are soaked.

The North Face Apex eTips demonstrate a competent glove that can also work a touchscreen.

I’ve typically had more success with thinner fleece gloves and glove liners than anything with a proper shell and insulation. Even with the best working gloves, I haven’t had anything that came close to trying to work a touch screen with bare hands.

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