25 Winters of Cold Hands, Fixed in 10 Minutes

For over twenty five years, I had cold hands on every cold-weather trip. Better Gore-Tex didn't fix it. More liners didn't fix it. Layering didn't fix it. Then a pair of $80 Japanese gloves fixed it in ten minutes, and I still can't fully explain why.

Here's what I want to unpack with you today:

Let me walk you through it.

When your hands get cold, the reflex is to reach for warmer. Thicker gloves. More waterproofing. More money. I did exactly that for twenty five years, working through every combination of liners, mittens and Gore-Tex outer mitts and gloves I could find.

None of it gave me warm hands. The systems were bulky, fiddly, and somehow still cold. I assumed I just hadn't found the warm-enough option yet.

Sound familiar?

In 2021, after years of this, I read an Adventure Alan blog post about a brand I'd never heard of. He rated a blue glove called the Showa Temres. A Japanese glove built for cold, wet work, fishing and cold storage and the like. Cheap. Orignally not designed for hiking at all. I searched immediately for them and ended up finding some but also stumbled across a bigger sturdier looking cousin the Showa Temres 282-02. A black version with wrist toggles to secure them around your forearms.

The first time I pulled them on, my hands went from numb to almost too hot inside ten minutes. That is not an exaggeration. Ten minutes.

I've taken them on every trip since. I rate them so highly I bought another two spare pairs in case Showa ever stops making them.

Here's where I'll be straight with you. Showa markets the Temres as breathable. The shell is a micro-porous polyurethane, the same idea as the membrane in a good rain jacket, meant to let sweat vapour out while keeping rain from getting in.

In the conditions I hike in Tasmania, I'm not convinced that's the whole story. When everything is wet for days, the inside of my liner still ends up soaked. Nothing stays dry here. And yet my hands still warm up.

So I've stopped chasing dry. My best guess is that the seamless, windproof shell stops the wind stripping heat off my skin, while the lining keeps insulating even when it's wet. I don't fully know. I just know that for me, warm beats dry, and these deliver warm on every single trip.

On a recent trip in proper blizzard conditions, I added a thin liner glove inside the Temres. Hands stayed warm all day. That is the entire upgrade. A wet-weather glove becomes a blizzard glove for the price of a liner.

The other thing worth saying is durability. I've worn these through brutal Tasmanian scrub, the kind that shreds expensive shells, and there's not a single puncture in them.

Out of every piece of gear I've worn this decade, this is the single biggest one-item upgrade I'd put in front of a struggling hiker tomorrow. Not because it's clever or expensive, but because it solves the actual problem instead of the surface one. That's the test I now run every bit of kit through.

I'd love to hear what's worked for you. If you've found one bit of gear that solved a problem nothing else could, hit reply and tell me about it. I read every response.

THAT’S ALL FOR THIS WEEK

Thanks for reading Mowser’s Musings. I hope this helps you hike further and happier.

Until next week, keep exploring.

Mowser

Discover more. Hike further.

P.S. If you want to see the Temres and the rest of the gear I actually carry, the live list is on my TrailKit page, with links to where to grab each piece.