Bring back the digits

In praise of mountain mittens

I spotted a thread on Mountain Project this week on the subject of handware for climbing the Cassin Ridge on Denali. What surprised me was how little attention was given to mittens, and it was all about the gloves, generally big, thick, heavy, leather-palmed models with the word ‘guide’ or ‘pro’ in the title. What’s odd about this is pretty much all routes climbed before the late 90s were climbed wearing mittens, either wool pre-80s, and fibre pile and Goretex after that, and then a mix of the pile, synthetic fill, and Nylon/Gore going on. In the high mountains, people just didn’t wear gloves, apart from mountain guides, who wore leather work gloves, primarily due to having to short rope clients around (leather is a terrible high mountain material in anything but boots, as it just freezes like a rock, but guides are not generally making open bivies with clients, or hunkering down in snow holes). There were gloves around, ski gloves, but few people used them, probably due to them being made cheaply, and they were too fragile for climbing, plus they were pink. If you get yourself a copy of a book like Himalaya Alpine Style (you should), you’ll find that everyone was wearing mitts.

This began to change in the late 90s, when companies began to offer dedicated climbing-shelled climbing gloves that were really nicely tailored and had higher quality materials. The first company that really nailed it, and still does, was Outdoor Research. Still, as the market grew, Black Diamond got into the action (when it was a climbing brand, not a clothing brand), along with Patagonia, Terra Nova, and Mammut. These new gloves seemed to be the ‘thing’ if you wanted to climb hard, and so everyone ditched their mitts for just belay duty and moved on mass to gloves, almost overnight.

The problem was, and still is that gloves will never be as warm as mitts, and often, any dexterity you hoped you would gain was lost as you couldn’t feel your fingers anyway. Something like the hot aches, which I don’t really think was much of a thing in the past, became standard operating procedure, and no winter climb was complete without a few tears. I don’t have the figures, but I feel I started to see a lot more frostbitten fingertips in the bar on my winter alpine holidays. By keeping your fingers grouped, it’s like inviting four people for a gang bang in your tent; it’s pretty warm. I remember talking to some guys who went to climb Everest in winter. They told me how they just used Buffalo mittens on the lower section of the mountain, which are minimal mittens as you’ll find beyond just the shell alone (like a kayak mitten). Still, they worked, as the warmth is coming from the hand and fingers, not the mitten itself (as long as you keep your hands from getting cold, they stay warm, but once they get cold, they stay cold unless you can warm them up, like putting them on your neck or armpits).

A bigger problem was, and is longevity, and if you can get a pair of mittens to last more than one season of mixed climbing, then you’re probably not climbing much. It’s like if you made yourself a pair of running shoes, out of pile and Goretex, with thin leather soles, and then went for a walk around the block. They’d be full of holes within an hour or two. Yes, this applies to mittens as well (in fact, I have had to wear my mittens on my feet after dropping a boot!). Still, the difference is a mitten has very few seams and can be made from as little as four pieces of fabric, whereas a glove, with its boxy and tailored design, is made up of far more pieces and with far more complex seam patterns, each one a point of weakness.

I remember getting my first pair of expensive BD Guide gloves and thinking they were the dog bollocks, but one near the lap of the Super Couloir on Fitzroy, and they were fit for the bin, ending the trip covered in gaffer tape, Strappal and Shoe Glue.

Material choice is also a factor, as is the cost of that material. The ideal mountain gloves would be texturised Kevlar, like Schoella Keprotec (designed for motorbike clothing), with all seams sewn using Dyneema thread. But such a glove would cost about $500, and that strength would come at the cost of having a glove that melts on rappels and is less grippy than leather (in the shop, when not frozen).

Leather-palmed gloves are a bit like democracy, the worst, apart from all the others. They do have lots of plus points, but they require care and attention (keep them waxed so they don’t split and slow freezing speed). At least they don’t melt, but when you’re on a multi-day climb, you eventually give up on them, and they end up like frozen claws in the lid of your rucksack (forcing your hands into frozen gloves at the start of the day is like OJ putting on his murder gloves: impossible).

After a lot of trial and error, moving more and more towards gloves that were more like mittens, gloves with three fingers, flip-over mittens, lobster mittens, flip-overs with gloves underneath, I eventually just thought “fuck it”, and just started wearing, mittens, mainly because each time I thought I’d cracked the perfect glove (I worked with Montane on this), in the end, it would just fall apart or end up like all my ambitions, full of holes.

I was a big fan of lobster-style mittens, as they allowed you to place and remove cams, vital for hard mixed climbing, but I worked out that I could do this faster, easier, and with less risk of dropping the cam, or nut, or screw, by just taking my hand out of the mitten and doing it barehanded. I also found that I could get away with a much thinner mitten than I could do with a mitten and mitt designs that had almost no insulation over the palm, meaning you could grip your axe much better.

Taking your mitts on and off is a pain, I suppose, but as with everything, it’s all about adopting a system and then adapting to it, so it becomes second nature. For example, I’d have my mitts connected to the bungee at my elbows (I could also pull it up over my shoulder to get the mitts out of the way) and then to my mitts at the balance point, so when they were hanging off my, they hung sideways, so they didn’t fill up with snow (some always get in, but if the mitts are good, you should be able to tip it out and they will carry on working). For non-technical cold climbs, I adopted the polar method of keeping hold of my mittens and hand a cord that went around the back of my neck and was secured around the front, so it was impossible to lose them (you do need a breakaway system, like a 15mm breakaway buckle, in avoid getting strangled by them if you fall down a crevasse). But for a climb like the Cassin, I’d probably consider having a semi-permanent attachment between my mittens and my clothing, sewing on some tab onto my active and static tops, and using a good quality wire gate to clip my mitten keeper cord into it. I’d probably go for a combo of a lightweight mitten (even just the shell), a heavyweight mitten (synthetic), and then a few pairs of Nitrile-style lightweight work gloves (soak in Nitwax for a few days).

As for makes and models, I’ve always found that as soon as you find your perfect mitten (or glove) or anything technical, within the next cycle, they’re gone, replaced by something less good or nothing at all, and so, as soon as you find a pair of mittens that really work. They’re not super expensive, so get yourself a second pair while you can. But, unlike gloves, fit is not much of an issue, and often, the cheapest $50 mitts you can find will work better than a fancy pair of $250 gloves. If I was going to give the nod to one mitten, it would be something left field, like the $110 Super Mitts from Wiggys, a US brand that makes work gear for oil and gas workers in Alaska (don’t get the Nomex ones, unless you’re a hazard when operating an XGK!). They are far from sexy, compared to BD or Mammut, being made from Nylon and with synthetic sweaty palms, but the insulation inside them (Climbshield) will outlast the stuff in the other brands by many seasons; as for warmth, they worked at 17,000 feet on Denali in February, so there’s no stress about not bringing your finger home, which ultimately, is what it’s all about.