Cold hands & feet · Winter

Your gloves aren't the problem. Your sweat is.

You sweat through the skin track, the bootpack, or the first three laps off the chair, then you stop moving and your fingers go. Wet skin dumps heat far faster than dry skin. A warmer glove doesn't fix that. Drier hands do.

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Wet skinloses heat many times faster than dry skin

Night beforeDry Spray or Performance, inside gloves and boots

Overnightis when windburned knuckles rebuild

Redmond, ORmade in our own 100% solar-powered facility

We've stood at the top of a line we drove four hours for, stuffing dead hands in our armpits.

Hands and feet go cold from the inside out. You work hard, they sweat, the sweat sits against the skin inside a glove or a boot, and the moment you stop moving it pulls the heat straight out of you. Managing the moisture is the part nobody tells you about.

Then there's the skin. Cold air and wind crack knuckles fast, and dry, glassy fingers sting on every chairlift bar. The routine below handles both: dry first, then rebuild.

The fix, start to finish

Months out to the night after. Then you do it again.

Prevention is cheaper than repair, and repair sets up the next round of prevention. The loop looks like this.

1Months out
Get hands and feet used to Dry Spray or Performance before the season. Repair nightly so knuckles go into winter intact.
2Weeks out
Nightly sweat control on hands and feet for the week before a trip. Pack Split stick and Hydrate in the jacket.
3Night before
Dry Spray or Performance, hands and feet. Repair on top. Thin gloves to bed if you have them.
4During
Swap damp liners. Split stick on any fingertip that cracks. Keep moving on the transitions.
5After
Hydrate on glassy, stinging skin. Repair before bed. Massage Cream on stiff hands, feet, and quads at the lodge.
6Start again
Every night through the season. The sweat control is cumulative. The skin repair is nightly.

The routine

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01The night before

Step 1

Drier hands stay warmer.

Dry Spray or Performance on hands and feet before bed, no aluminum in either, and the sweat stays down inside gloves and boots the next day. Less moisture against the skin means the heat you make stays in.

Hands and feet, the night beforeDry Spray$8.95

The cream versionPerformance$8.95

02Overnight

Step 2

Rebuild what the wind took.

Repair on the whole hand before bed. Split stick in the pocket for fingertips that crack on the hill. Hydrate for the glassy, stinging stuff that happens after a windy day.

OvernightRepair$8.95

Pocket fix for fingertipsSplit$4.95

Glassy, stinging skinHydrate$8.95

03At the lodge

Step 3

Warm the stiff stuff up.

Massage Cream on hands, feet, and quads at the end of the day. Arnica, ginger, turmeric, and capsaicin, so you'll feel it warm up. Stiff muscles circulate better when they're loose.

Hands, feet, quadsMassage Cream$8.95

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Cold Hands & Feet — Winter Sports

The science of cold hands

Water pulls heat out of you twenty-five times faster than air.

That's the whole problem in one number. Dry skin inside a dry glove loses heat slowly. Sweaty skin inside a damp glove loses it fast, by conduction into the water and by evaporation off the skin, and evaporation is brutal: every gram of sweat that dries takes about 580 calories of heat with it. You make that sweat on the skin track, the bootpack, or the first three laps, and then you stop moving and it takes the heat with it.

Your body makes it worse on purpose. When the core gets cold, the vessels in your hands and feet clamp shut to keep warm blood near the organs. Fingers go white, then numb. Thomas Lewis described the hunting response in 1930, the cycle where cold fingers briefly reopen and close again, and anyone who's stood at the top of a line with dead hands knows exactly what he was looking at.

Gloves insulate. They don't fix moisture. Drier hands do. That's why winter athletes started using the same aluminum-free sweat control climbers use, on hands and feet, the night before. Less water against the skin, more of your own heat kept in.

1930Thomas Lewis describes the hunting response in cold fingers

25xWater conducts heat away roughly 25 times faster than air

580 calHeat lost for every gram of sweat that evaporates off skin

2010sWinter athletes adopt night-before sweat control for hands and feet

Night beforeDry Spray or Performance, hands and feet

OvernightRepair for the knuckles the wind opened up

Why it happens

Three ways it goes wrong. Three fixes.

Sweat inside the glove.

The skin track, the bootpack, the first fast laps. You sweat, it sits against the skin, and when you stop it takes the heat with it.

Fix: Dry Spray or Performance the night before →

Wind and cold crack skin.

Low humidity, wind, and repeated wet-dry cycles split knuckles and fingertips in a weekend.

Fix: Repair overnight, Split in the pocket →

Stiff muscles stay cold.

Tight hands, feet, and quads don't circulate well. The lodge is the place to warm them up properly.

Fix: Massage Cream at the lodge →

What winter does to skin.

Cold air holds almost no water. Add wind, add a heater on the drive home, add a wet-dry cycle every time you pull a glove off, and knuckles crack in a weekend. Fingertips go glassy and sting on the chairlift bar.

The routine is dry first, then rebuild. Dry Spray or Performance the night before on hands and feet. Repair before bed. Split stick in the jacket pocket. Massage Cream at the lodge for the stiff stuff. This is moisture and skin management, not a treatment for frostbite or a circulation condition. Persistent numbness or discoloration deserves a real look from a medical professional.

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The kit