Marmot Basic Work Glove: a review

As noted before, I've long taken an interest in the 'outdoor sports' equipment industry: as a climber/hiker/mountaineer/cyclist/etc., as someone who has worked in the industry (albeit at the very lowest level as a shop assistant); as gear reviewer for UKClimbing.com and, finally, as someone who just uses the bloody stuff.

Belaying in the basic work gloves

Perhaps like all apparel industries where fashion plays a much bigger part than many care to admit, there is little static about it. Certain brands do keep certain models in their range year after year, but these are the exceptions and its more likely to be, for example, technical climbing gear that goes years unchanged than technical clothing. Some items of clothing do make it into the 'classic' status and stay forever. I still wear a Patagonia Snap-T fleece jumper that I bought in January 1992 - but you can buy an identical one from Patagonia now if you wish! But far more normal is finding some item of clothing or equipment that you think is great - using/wearing it loads until it starts, fairly, to wear out; trying to replace it only to find the firm has dropped that product from their line. You then end up buying an alternative model that doesn't work or fit as well as the old one. C'est la vie. It also makes reviewing many things more than a year old kinda pointless as the chances of people being able to buy the same product drops off.

Ski touring in Arctic Norway in the basic work glove

Anyways... that's a long way of saying I really want to recommend the Marmot Basic Work Glove. Not only are they good - I've had a pair for something like 4 years and have used them loads - but because the old ones were looking really tatty I recently bought a new pair for 'town use' and they seem to be identical! Yes, a product that works really well, and remains in a company's line year after year. Would you believe it?

Grubby and tatty but still going strong

The Basic Work Glove is, well, rather basic: all leather with a fuzzy warm synthetic lining. That's it really; but what you get is gloves that you can grip things with and that are pretty dextrous (meaning less taking them off); that are windproof and breathable; and that are for me at least surprisingly warm. They are not waterproof so aren't great for ice climbing due to that. I waxed mine with Nikwax and that helps a lot, wet snow isn't a huge problem for example, but still they are gloves I use whilst walking to the icefalls, and whilst gearing up and the like, but I'll put on Goretex or eVent gloves to actually climb in. I like wearing them for skiing in all but the foulest of conditions, again because of the dexterity whether that's grabbing your pass to beep at a resort, or taking off climbing skins when touring. A basic leather glove seems to be favoured by many guides for summer Alpine as well; I've not used mine for that but I suspect they would work well. Perhaps one place where they might not be the best choice would be UK winter hillwalking and climbing, where having something more designed for rain and sleet might be better.

Strong and well sewn seams

They are as tough as old boots (or "old gloves" maybe?!), I got some slices in the palms of mine from the edge of a file when sharpening an ice screw whilst out climbing once but that's the only real damage to them. It didn't cut right the way through but went pretty deep, so I painted over the cuts with seam grip and this seems to have very effectively fixed it. It's nice that being leather you can 'fix' them so easily. Perhaps the best thing about the quality of their construction is the bomb-proof stitching. On my old ones it shows no signs of blowing even after four winters of hard use, something that isn't true on many of my more expensive ice climbing gloves.

So there you go: a simple glove that works really well. Finns should note that Partioaitta always seems to have them in their annual (or bi-annual?) sale. I think the normal price is €30, but both times I've paid only €20. There are various work gloves available from other brands that look very similar and cost a bit less. They may well be just as good, I don't know, but I can say the Marmot Basic Work Gloves are the best value and toughest general winter gloves I've owned.

Stuff that works: Power Grips pedal straps for winter riding

A month or so ago I discovered a newish blog "Coming Thru!", a Helsinki-based cycling blog, mainly focused on cycle commuting. There are a number of blogs about cycling in Helsinki written (for obvious reasons!) in Finnish, but my Finnish is hopeless enough to make reading them a pain (although I understand enough to really appreciate the people out there doing great cycle advocacy work). So it was great to find a Helsinki cycle bloggers writing in English like on Coming Thru. Anyway, over there Markus appears to be working through the frustration and expense of finding a clothing system that keeps you dry and warm enough to want to cycle commute on cool mornings, but not so hot you end up drowning in your own sweat. As anyone who does aerobic exercise in cool to cold weather knows, this isn’t that easy and can become an endless source of fascination, frustration, new gear purchasing and annoyance at kit you buy turns out not to work as well as the advert promised.

I’ll try and write more about my cold weather cycling experience in the future, but this post is dedicated to a simple idea that greatly improved my autumn/winter cycling experience – Power Grips. Power Grips are simple neoprene straps that fix diagonally onto any basic cage-style cycle pedal and do exactly what old fashioned toe clips do but better. By slipping your feet in diagonally through the to the diagonally positioned strap, your foot goes in with ease. Then when you straighten your foot parallel to the bike it becomes held firmly by the strap giving you the same power as you would get from an SDP style clip pedal. Hard to explain in words but incredibly simple in use – see the photo below (or here) and you’ll understand. Nevertheless, despite holding your foot on the pedal firmly, getting your foot out is easy so stopping and even falling off safely is no harder, perhaps even easier, than with SPDs.

I use clip-in pedals on all my bikes; different SPD version on my mountain bike and commuter, and SPD-SL style on my road bike. But I also get cold feet riding as the temperatures get lower. Sealskinz socks, and then neoprene over-shoes help, but still by the time the temperature is about or below freezing, my feet still get cold and I came to the conclusion that conduction through the cleat (a lump of metal on your shoe connected to bigger lumps of metal – the pedals) was the main reason for this. With Power Grips attached to an old pair of cage pedals I could wear roomy, old leather sneakers and when it got really cold, wear over-shoes over them. With a standard sole, rather than the pedal cleat on a cycling shoes, in contact with a minimal amount of metal because of the design of cage pedals, conduction of heat was minimized. Net result: warmer feet, and less miserable cyclists! So, yes, Power Grips do seem pricey for what you get, but if you ride a lot in sub-zero temperatures you will probably find them worth the money.

Stuff that works: Black Diamond Hotwires

Is good design always in part as much luck as judgement? When the Black Diamond Hotwire karabiner was released to the global climbing community I wonder if BD had any idea just how good a krab they had made? For any non-climbers who have been interested enough to read this far, until the Hotwire was released in, I think, 1995 all karabiners used a metal bar with a spring inside for the opening gate. Often now called ‘solid gates’ (as opposed to ‘wire gates’ like the Hotwires), the original design was more complicated and heavier. BD in using the wiregate design found that they could actually make the karabiners stronger – the few grammes saved by the gate design could be transferred to other parts of the karabiner body meaning a burlier design was possible at a relatively low weight – strong and light being the holy grail for climbing equipment designers. Wiregates also resist freezing better and don’t suffer from gate-flutter (which is too geeky to explain to anyone who doesn’t know what it is, but – in short - it ain’t cool).

Now I think every manufacturer that makes karabiners offers wire gate version – many just adding a wire-gate to a previous solid gate design. But the Hotwire was designed from the ground up as a wire-gate and has been unchanged for 15 years because the design was pretty close to perfect from the start. Other manufacturers now have wire gate krabs that are as good, but often after going through various less successful models to get to that point. But the Hotwire was not only the first ever wiregate krab sold to climbers, but for a long time arguably the best. Sadly, this year Black Diamond has removed the Hotwire from its range – but 15 years is a pretty good run for an item of climbing equipment. But happily they are replacing it with the new Hotwire (hurrah!) – they look great but have a pretty big legacy to live up to.

Stuff that works: La Sportiva Nepal Extremes

I wore my Nepal Extremes for the first time in some time this weekend. If anything made for mountaineers in the last decade deserves the over used tag - "a modern classic", it's the Nepals. Mine aren't very yellow any more - plenty of Nikwax ended that - but in the space of a couple of winters around the turn of the millennium it seemed that the majority of climbers in Scotland were walking around with these yellow beauties on their feet. When I started climbing in the early 1990s and working in climbing shop in Glasgow during those years, everyone bought plastic boots for climbing. Now plastics must make up maybe 5% or less of the market. Other insulated leather boots have been made since, and the Nepal Extremes were themselves a development on their non-insulated, path-breaking brothers the Nepal Tops, but that layer of Thinsulate allied to that lovely, cheery yellow leather, changed mountaineering footwear for good. Mine are ten years old, and the front lip is a bit worn from so much front pointing, but otherwise they're still going strong after a decade of climbing in the Pyrenees, the Alps, the Scottish, Welsh and Lake District mountains, Arctic Norway and lots and lots of Finnish icefalls.

Stuff that works #1: DMM Cobras

It's a bit sad to call an inanimate object made of aluminium and nylon "sexy", but come on - to all the climbers out there: look at the curves on that - phoarrr!

I've decided that on blogs you get a lot moaning - it's the democratisation of the media, finally the little guy gets chance to yell "this is really rubbish" about a crap consumer good he or she got tricked into buying by clever advertising or whatever. I write gear reviews that, if done well, is basically institutionalised moaning. So I think I need to sometimes sit back and look at stuff that really works. This will probably be climbing gear and outdoorsy stuff, but maybe other stuff as well and might become an irregular series.

So to start with the DMM Cobras - mid-90s welsh engineering at it's absolute finest. Ridiculously strong, and with brilliant ergonomics - I still don't think there is any karabiner that is easier to clip. I think there is a probably reasonable fear that the bulbous nose makes it slightly more likely that the krab could unclip - particularly if back clipped and that is why this design has been superseded. But basically back clipping is your own dumb fault and easily avoided - whilst in its favour, that nose made even the most tenuous of clips a breeze. Cobras would be considered heavy in comparison to modern krabs, but that probably about the only thing against them for rock climbing to my mind.