Mountain Hardwear Absolute Zero Mitten - 2008 BCS

These are bad mittens. The gauntlet cord delaminated the first day of use at -25F so now its just a loose elastic loop within the glove. I have tiny wrists and the wrist elastic in size L is tight enough to cut of circulation in my hands. Not recommended for their intended use.

I don't want to be too abusive on these, but there are a couple issues that stuck with me.

first, the mountain hardware (MH) mitts weren't as warm as the outdoor research (OR) alti mitts I was also "testing." I was trying to decide which pair would work better for my 50 mile roundtrip commute on a scooter in the dead of winter in Chicago; waterproofness (mainly spray from cars) and general warmth were critical.

With the MH mitts, I noticed that the thumb area wasn't as well insulated, and when I alternated mitts (a different one on each hand), the MH mitts simply weren't as warm. Don't get me wrong; I wasn't risking frostbite, but the MH mitts just weren't ~as~ toasty.

I wanted to mention what I was using the mitts for since it's probably ~not~ what the mitt was specifically intended for, hence my hesitance in griping too much (and wanting folks to take this with a grain of salt / full disclosure).

However, the second, and perhaps more important detail, was that the built-in MH wrist cinch / closure area was ~really~ tight...so much so that I had a really difficult time getting my right hand even into the mitt after the left mitt was on. Moreover, my thumb would often miss the thumb space (on either mitt) because I had to really compress my hand unnaturally to get through that uber-elastic cinching band, and wrestling with the inner liner ~through~ the outershell while wearing a mitt on the ~other~ hand... well, it was quite a challenge that sucked in the warmth of my garage, so at 18,000 feet it would probably be aggravating as well.

I can see how that tight cinch helps keep the heat in, but if you are wrestling with it to get your hand in, well, that price of admission was a bit too high for me. (As a side note, I had tried both a medium and large size in the MH, and the cinch factor was just as much a challenge when the mitt itself was a little too large).

...and that's it. this product would probably benefit from a climber's review since it's more closely tied to their intended use, but for what I was doing, it wasn't quite the right choice.

I live in the Alaska Arctic. I used these one day ice fishing at -20. My hands were fairly warm. I also had to snow machine in them. THey held up pretty good. I didn't feel any wind getting through the mitt. The top part of the mitten has the more insulation so i have no complaints about that. I know they use less insulation in the palm for dextarity but i wish it had more insulation. Also, near the thumb the insulation had moved around so there is not insulation in a spot about the size of a quarter. Now here is my one and biggest complaint. At the very tip of the mitten, where the two different insulations meet. There is a sown crease there right at my finger tips. There is no insulation there. My finger tips got very very cold. For that reason if you are gonna be in temperatures -10 or colder you may want to look else where. If you are from midwest or something and it may only get to 0 degrees these things will keep your hands nice and toasty. I'm thinking to send em back and get the masherbrum ones that i hear are warmer!

Update 12/11- Had these glove for two weeks and they are falling apart. At the end of the gauntlet the seems are not taped or sewn they are GLUED! they it is all falling apart how sad i thought they would be quality, don't get!

I had a pretty bad experience with these. First off these gloves are made for extreme cold and 'should' be able to withstand pretty much anything. I brought these with me on an ice climbing trip last winter where the temperature was around -35C, they were very good at keeping my hands warm but after about a day i noticed a huge problem, the draw cord at the base of the gloves is held in there with a welded seam, and being out in this extreme cold caused the welded seam to completely rip out all the way around the glove and the draw cord was now hanging out of the glove, i could no longer tighten them up around my forearms. This happened on BOTH gloves and i can definately tell you that i wasn't being hard on them when tightening them up.

I sent them back to Mountain Hardwear and they deemed them as defective and it took them 10 MONTHS to send me a replacement pair....... I finally got the replacement pair and they look exactly the same as last years model, i hope this doesn't happen to me again.

Other than that problem the glove itself is great, warm and keeps the wind and water out!