Cold hands

[peddles]

You know it's cold when the juice in your drink bottle starts to freeze.  How on earth do others manage to keep their hands warm?  I'm wearing sheepskin mittens now for my daily ride but it still takes about 5 minutes, before my hands warm up enough to remove my helmet. Any sugggestions?

[julk]

Expensive, but how about some Pogies?

[Bearbait]

They sell 'lobster gloves' for biking in the winter here.  Three fingered so you have a little more control than mits.  Heatpacks will help in extremes - chemical packs that heat when you break them apart and last for 1/2 hour or so.  Now they have battery powered socks that stay warm for several hours - not sure if have mits yet. Battery pack is quite small and sits up on your calf.

Mountain Equipment Coop has a great selection of all sorts of winter gear.  Here's website if interested;

www.mec.ca

Peter

[expr]

Same Problem here to, i went to the trouble of buying some £15 ski gloves expecting to have mitts like toast, but have been quite disappointed this last week temps down to -10 in Cheshire on my daily ride to work of around 10 mile and i am now starting to get chill pains in my hands after only a couple of miles. I have found a good scarf keeps all my face warm by my hands feel quite painfull.

I think more money needs to be spent on better gloves. Maybe some professional ski gloves would be better. Or as has allready been suggested some mitts with a hand warmer in.....

[Bearbait]

I wear my ski gloves up to -14.  Good gloves will have a fleece liner and a water-proof outer.  Thinsulate will not do the trick.  For colder weather, you need to get mitts.  Gloves cannot keep isolated fingers warm.  I have a pair of mitts I use when it is really cold.  They came with a liner which I haven't even used yet. 

[blair]

I'd add a vote for lobster claw gloves.
Had a pair (now sadly deceased) that were warmer than anything I've tried since.

Next best are downhill ski gloves, if you can find a pair that are not too bulky.

Neither of the above work terribly well with STI road shifters.

You can improve any gloves by wearing inner gloves under them. I have a pair of fine merino gloves from IceBreaker (NZ company) that add a few degrees to the lower limit. Silk or polyprop work OK, but I think wool is the best for this.

I think some of the motorcycle suppliers do electrically heated inner gloves, too, and modern batteries may make them practical.

[Paulson]

Yesterday I suffered from cold fingers.  After about 3 miles I actually had to stop and warm them up; however by 5 miles they were getting less cold, and by about 7 miles they were perfectly comfortable.  This was in zero deg C temperatures, the odd thing was that the day before in similar temp, no problems.  I guess you've just got to think warm thoughts and plug on.

It's my feet that end up worse than my hands after a couple of hours riding.....even with a pair of neoprene overshoes.

[Bearbait]

I agree - feet are the hardest to deal with.  Skiing experience - one layer of good socks. Then the best neoprene cover.  Other than that...the other day I was skiing in -30 with wind chill.  I wondered why my feet didn't hurt until I got back to a heater.  Once the circultaion starting coming back it was clear!

MEC sells a battery heated sock.  They also have a lot of articles on layering you may find useful.

[Paulson]

I think I may have found the solution - I got a pair of these a couple of years ago:



with a newly acquired pair of these underneath [Sealskinz Thermal Liner Gloves, about £7]:



very cosy...

[expr]

They look very similar to the one's that I've got but the liner is suppose to be inside as part of the glove, they were ok at first but as the temp went down to around -10 I was only getting a few miles with pain in my hands, I put a further pair of gloves on inside the others which did make it better, but not as cosy as I'd like.

Dave.

[Blacksail]

After experimenting, I would wear a different gloves on each hand, with different materials and layers, I came up with a solution which works for me down to   -10c (that's as cold as it's got round here this year)

I tried ski, woolen, lobster and waterproof Sealskins with either cotton or silk liners and for a final layer of protection I tried the plastic gloves that you get free at petrol pumps as the fingers on these are large enough to get over even the fattest fingered gloves.

What I found was a bit of a surprise, but makes some sense I think, was that a pair of ski gloves that were rather too big for me, fleecy and windproof, with no liner, worked fine once I had warmed up. If I wore a silk liner with these my fingers would invariably be numb with the cold but removing this extra layer of "protection" allowed the heat from the main part of my hand circulate to the finger tips. Mittens would work even better but they aren't great for operating a bicycle with.

[expr]

blacksail,

your right in all that you say. I did try a few combinations and also found some surprising results. Its allmost like if you put to many layers on then you isolate your extremities from any near by heat. That's why I think as some have suggested that the mitts work very well, it's just a little difficult navigating the fingers around the handlebars.

I also found that if I gave an extra push of effort on the bike then my hands started to warm up considerably, I assume from the extra blood pressure and heat being generated.

[Erudin]

Did the Dartmoor Devil audax and my gloves got wet and hands started to get cold, shielded my hands behind the barbag which worked well. There are also Breezeblockers available that do the same thing.



http://www.breezeblockers.com/index.php

http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/cycle-show-2010-breezeblockers-hand-shields-28079

[Danneaux]

+1 on the lobster-claw gloves for me as well.  Mine sport a homemade gauntlet attached to some Gore-Tex versions made for runners by Early Winters (Seattle, USA) dating from the early 1980s.  Those over cycling gloves have done well for me down to -12F/-24C in the past.  Before I discovered them, I contracted a diagnosed case of frostbite from riding in freezing rain with cycling gloves only at 5F/-15C.  My fingers developed hard little white lumps that resembled "pearls" and bother to this day in cold weather.  Nevertheless, I've found the real cure for me comes from shielding the fingers from direct exposure to wind and rain and the lobster-claw gloves have worked well in that respect for me.  Time to dig mine out once again; a second consecutive La Nina winter weather pattern is predicted for 2011/2012 in America's Pacific Northwest, with unusually cold, wet temperatures and greater-than-average snowfall accumulations.

Best,

Dan.
Oregon, USA