Mitts for When the Mercury Drops
When the skis, boots, poles and skins made an appearance in the living room for the third night in a row last week, I knew it was time to either get my husband a hamster wheel, or go visit the snowmakers on the mountain.
Vermont holds the record for most terrain covered by snowmakers in the East — after all, it’s home to “Hug a Snowmaker Day” (really), so we headed up to Jay Peak to pick up DJ’s season pass and to check out the powder — whether real, imagined, or man-made. (And as per last night’s snow-dump, everything is newly dusted in fresh snow.)
We arrived late enough in the day that all of the lifts were closed, which made skinning up the mountain both easy and legal, according to Jay’s AT/backcountry rules (off-limits when the lifts are running). Stir-craziness abated, DJ took a few turns while I put my new Black Diamond Mercury Mitts to the test.
Skinning up after-hours at Jay Peak
Since we only had time for one quick run before dark, my evaluation continued the next day at Smugglers’ Notch.
Sun and blue skies mid-December at Smugglers’ — and single-digit temps. Time to try out the Mercury Mitts.
Sunny skies at Smugglers' Notch
As a kid, my family doctor diagnosed me with Raynaud’s Disease, which is a fancy way of saying that I’m always cold. (His advice? Always wear a wool hat … while indoors. Thanks, Doc.) As a result, I have an entire fleet of winter hand-wear, from mittens to gloves to wool liners to chemical hand-warmers — and I’m a pretty tough critic of anything that claims to keep my digits warm.
Rated to tackle temps between -20 to 10° F, the Mercury is a two-part mitten system with a stretchy nylon exterior shell and a waterproof PrimaLoft liner mitt inside. Worn together, these things are bombproof. And when I removed the shell and let it dangle from the wrist straps, the liner’s loft kept my hands toasty — even when standing around shooting photos. Best of all, the trigger-finger option allowed enough dexterity to take photos and fiddle with manual settings without going gloveless. Check it out:
The rest of the liner is big enough to tuck your pointer finger back into the main pocket when you don’t need a trigger finger, so you could tuck a chemical hand-warmer in there, too — if you even need it.
Cold-hand problem solved, I spent the rest of the day carving turns made possible by Smuggs’ fleet of 300 snow-making guns (finally supplemented by fresh powder as of yesterday), and it’s a sure bet that these mitts will be full-time weapons in my cold-weather arsenal.
Kicking up powder around a curve in Upper Rumrunner
