Early this year I made it clear that I wanted to take responsibility for our guide to the best winter cycling gloves. I felt like I wanted to share what I’d learned while training through the winter. I didn’t seek out bad weather, or good weather, I just rode. My rule was that every Sunday my ride needed to be about 160 km/100 miles. That was it. It didn’t matter what the weather was, or how I felt that day, all that was important was that I left the house and spent the day riding. The side effect of that was a serious deep dive, around 2000km / 1240 miles, on the topic of winter riding.
In the American Pacific Northwest, it doesn’t often snow but it does rain a lot. Almost every ride would be 6-7 hours of constant rain with temperatures ranging from 1-6 degrees C and keeping my hands warm was a constant battle. I saw some beautiful scenery and made some lasting memories, but I also learned a lot of lessons about gloves. Much of that knowledge is in the buyers’ guide but there are also a number of more general concepts that I wanted to share. Keep reading if you are looking for info on how to keep your hands warm in the worst winter weather.
1. There is no such thing as a waterproof glove
I didn’t learn this lesson during the time I was testing gloves recently. I learned it over quite a few failed attempts at long rides in years past. I’m an optimistic person and I tend to trust that quality products will do what they say. The problem is that waterproof gloves are waterproof but there’s an asterisk.
If I tell you something is waterproof most people naturally assume that it will keep water out. With many things in life that’s not actually true. Gloves, and apparel in general, are one of those things. Waterproof gloves will withstand a specific amount of water for a specific amount of time. Different fabrics have different specifications but they will all fail eventually in one way or another.
In fact, even if a glove uses a truly waterproof technology, it will typically still fail. The most obvious example of this is the Gore-Tex membrane. It is completely and totally waterproof in the way you’d expect but you can’t make a pair of gloves without face fabrics. The membrane sits buried inside layers of other materials that aren’t as waterproof. Eventually, even Gore-Tex gloves will end up a soaking wet mess. If you want to ride for…
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