HandUp Cold Weather Gloves: No Bueno

I love my summerweight HandUp gloves. They're somehow cooler than not wearing any gloves, and despite that, they're fairly comfortable down to 50F degrees. The fit is fantastic, yadda yadda, you've heard all this before.

However, it's winter, and the temperatures in Denver get much lower than 50 degrees. I have some burly mountaineering gloves that work great from 0-20 degrees, but I need something for that in between zone. I've tried a ton of different gloves for that 20-50 range, and I really wanted HandUp to restock their Winter Glove and see how it worked out. I ordered a pair as soon as they did. Shortly after they restocked, they also released an colder winter glove with fleece lining. I was stoked and ordered them too.

I've ridden both pairs of gloves in the 10-50 range for the last 6-8 weeks, and I've amassed about 300 miles between them. I mostly reach for the colder gloves for 10-30 degree rides, and the cold gloves for 20-40 degree rides. Unfortunately, every ride has had about the same experience:

  1. The gloves feel awesome and warm
  2. The gloves repel all the wind surprisingly well
  3. Because I'm working hard, I start sweating
  4. The gloves get wet
  5. The gloves get cold
I'd guess I get about an hour of good use out of them before they're wet. Once they're wet, they just conduct all of the heat out of my body, like some kind of radiator or air conditioning device. The windproofing is pretty excellent, but I believe this contributes to their lack of breathability and wet insulation performance. They're just as comfy as the summerweight variants, though they're sized slightly larger. It might be large enough to use with a thin merino liner, which may solve the problem. On their own, though, they're just not right for me to use in the cold.

As a disclaimer, I tend to sweat more than the average person. If you don't sweat much, then these might be fine for dry cold days.

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