7 Tricks to Keep Your Hands Warm While Snowboarding
Keeping your hands warm while snowboarding is important for comfort, but also for tasks like tying the laces of your snowboard boots, buckling snowboard bindings, or popping the top on your favorite après beverage.
For most riders, investing in a high-quality pair of GORE-TEX gloves or mittens is the best place to start. However, if you’ve already done that, and you still get cold hands while snowboarding, read up on these seven tips to keep your hands warm, straight from the outerwear experts at GORE and Burton.
- Invest in High-quality GORE-TEX Gloves or Mittens
- Stay Dry to Stay Warm
- Hydrate and Eat Calory-dense Foods
- Layer Your Clothing
- Swing Those Arms
- Use Hand Warmers in Your Gloves
- Warm Up in The Lodge
Pro tip: Go hands-free with Step On boots and Step On bindings for the future of performance and simplicity.
1. Invest in High-Quality GORE-TEX Gloves or Mittens
Invest in a high-quality pair of GORE-TEX gloves or mittens as a first line of defense against the cold. As the leading manufacturer of waterproof-breathable membranes, GORE-TEX products are guaranteed to keep you dry, a quality that’s important when you play in the snow. GORE-TEX gloves and mitten feature a semi-permeable membrane that keeps snow, sleet, and water out while allowing your sweat vapor to escape.
When purchasing your first pair of snowboarding gloves or mittens, you’ll want to consider a variety of factors including the type and amount of insulation, cuff style, features, and fit. Burton's Official Snowboarding Gloves Buyer’s Guide is a great resource to guide you through this process.
2. Stay Dry to Stay Warm
Keeping your hands dry is a major part of keeping your hands warm while snowboarding. As we already mentioned, GORE-TEX gloves or mittens are a good starting point to achieve this. However, when it’s snowing heavily, or during vigorous uphill skinning, your hands can still get damp. This isn’t a failure of the GORE-TEX membrane, but instead an issue with the high relative humidity inside or outside your gloves.
To prepare for this situation, we have two recommendations.
- Bring a lightweight, non-waterproof glove and/or liner glove to use during aerobic activity, when it’s not snowing. Liners and non-waterproof gloves breathe better than insulated waterproof gloves and can let a higher volume of sweat vapor escape.
- Bring a second pair of insulated waterproof gloves or mittens. This makes it easy to swap into a nice dry pair halfway through your day if things get clammy. When you swap gloves, put your damp pair in an inner jacket pocket so that your body heat can dry them out. This way, you’ll eventually be able to switch back to your original gloves if your second pair gets damp.
3. Hydrate and Eat Calory-dense Foods
Even when outfitted with high-quality insulated GORE-TEX gloves or mittens, you should start every riding day with a calory-dense meal and plenty of fluids.
Proper hydration improves blood circulation, which in turn helps extremities (hands and feet) stay warmer in cold weather. Be sure to hydrate with water throughout the day. And while the occasional energy drink or adult beverage won’t cause major issues, it’s best to avoid excessive amounts of sugar or alcohol during physical activities.
For food, having plenty of calories in your system gives your body a source of energy to burn and generate warmth. Foods with a higher fat content will burn long and slow, while carbs will give you a quick burst of available calories. Aim to eat a balanced meal that includes both.
4. Layer Your Clothing
Layering your clothing will help your hands stay warmer while snowboarding, by keeping your core warm. Here’s how it works. When your core is not adequately insulated, your capillaries constrict, limiting circulation to your extremities (hands and feet). Essentially, your body is saying, “sure, I’ll sacrifice the toes and fingers to keep the vital organs warm.”
If you layer properly, your core will stay warm, leading to better circulation, keeping your hands, fingers, toes, and feet warmer. To layer properly, start with a wool or synthetic base layer, followed by a fleece, down, or Primaloft insulating layer, and finally a waterproof GORE-TEX shell. Layering also works for your hands. Try wearing thin liner gloves under your insulated gloves.
Pro tip: Review Winter Layering Tips for All Conditions and learn how to choose the right clothing to stay warm on the hill.
5. Swing Those Arms
A quick and easy way to temporarily warm up your hands is to vigorously swing your arms. To do this, first, make sure that you have enough room so that you don’t accidentally smack an unexpecting bystander. Next, extend your arms fully by your sides, and swing them forwards and then backward, as if you are running in place (but you don’t need to move your legs). If you do this for five to ten seconds, you will feel warm blood coursing down into your cold fingers, warming them up. While this is only a temporary solution, it’s an easy way to warm up cold hands after an extended chairlift ride, or any time, for that matter.
Pro tip: This trick also works for cold toes. Have a friend stand next to you and hold their shoulder for balance. Now, swing your leg forwards and backward, keeping your knee straight and allowing your leg to pivot at the hip. After five to ten seconds, you should feel your toes warming up.
6. Use Hand Warmers in Your Gloves
Sometimes on the coldest days, you are going to get cold, no matter how prepared you are. In these instances, chemical or electric hand warmers might be needed to keep your hands warm. Some GORE-TEX snowboarding gloves and mittens have dedicated hand warmer pockets, but if yours don’t, try securing hand warmers on the inside of your wrists, or back of your hands.
Pro tip: Read Burton's Official Snowboarding Gloves Buyer's Guide for an overview of available features, like hand warmer compatibility, cuff style, insulation, and fit.
7. Warm Up in The Lodge
Warming huts and lodges are dotted across ski mountains for a reason. Use them.
After going hard all morning, it’s always nice to find a ski lodge where you can sit down, eat some lunch, drink some water, and let your body warm up. If your gloves or helmet have gotten damp, you might be able to dry them out with hot air from a hand blower, heater, or fireplace.
The lodge is also a great place to give your feet a break from your snowboard boots and let socks and boot liners dry out. Just be aware of how your feet smell because no one wants to have their lunch break ruined by your nasty-ass socks, bro.
