Equipment is important

So, when I first started skiing, I did not know how important decent gear was. Skiing in the Northeast offers several challenges you don’t have out West. For one, it is COLD when you ski here. It is not unusual to be skiing in below freezing weather.So, we make sure we have ourselves outfitted in layers. Another thing we do is for the cold people in our family, we make sure they have some extra help.

For instance, my wife tends to get cold easily, especially her hands. To compensate, one year I got here some heated gloves for the holidays. We have found they are decently warn even if you don’t turn on the heating elements but they help a ton when they are turned on. These Outdoor Research Lucent mitts have a couple of batteries that are easy to charge and not cumbersome in the mitts themselves. Matter of fact, they are less bulky than some of the other mitts I have seen. We like the fact that they have long cuffs to cover any gap between them and your jacket and they have the important straps to make sure you don’t lose them if you need to take them off for a minute on the hill or on the lift.

Even before we got the mitts, I wanted to make sure to keep her core warm though. Keeping that core warm is probably the most important as if it is not warm, then your extremities will definitely be cold. So naturally, getting battery powered fleece is in order. She has a Venture brand one and I can’t find that exact model anymore, but it has worked well. She not only uses it for skiing, but being outside in the fall for soccer games for our boys or other events make this worth while. It has held up well and we have not had to replace the battery or anything.

Of course the last thing is the feet. Keeping those toes warm are important. Over the years, between all family members I have seen many of the systems used. The latest one that my wife has seems to be really solid. Previous ones the batteries didn’t last well, they were too hot or not hot enough and they too easily were bumped between setting. The Hotronic system these days seem to have batteries that last forever on a comfortable setting of 2 out of 4. Occasionally it needs to be bumped up to 3 in the really cold weather but overall it does a fine job. Also, this system does not seem to have an issue with being bumped on or off. Previously, they would get put to full on and you would feel your foot burn or they would go down to low and not be warm enough. It is not easy to cause that with this system. Also, if it is set to setting 4, it will not stay there, it will auto go down to 3 after a reasonable amount of time to prevent you from roasting your toes.