Gloves are an essential piece of D of E kit for all people, often they are not used but are sorely missed if needed and not taken.

The primary function of gloves are to keep your hands warm, if you suffer from cold hands then you will need to take that into consideration and maybe carry two pairs or use glove liners, these work the same way as the layering system and will trap air between the liner and glove to further insulate from the elements.

Waterproof gloves are not really essential, I recently bought a pair of gloves that were guaranteed 100% waterproof, I was so disappointed to end up with hands that were just as wet as if I hadn’t bothered but on the up side, my hands were still warm, I just had to keep wringing the gloves out! I would recommend that whatever you buy it is important that they keep your hands warm first, even wet hands can be warm.

While navigating in the hills you will need to use a map and compass, maps will need to be removed and replaced in pockets and compasses are fiddly things at the best of times so you can see that a huge pair of wooly gloves may impede your use of these and you are constantly having to remove them to navigate, this is no great problem providing you can get your gloves on and off fairly easily while they are soaking wet.

With lots of variety of gloves on the market choice is a personal preference, just make sure they will keep your hands warm even when wet, there’s a good chance that if you use them they will get wet. My best advice is to try them out, put them on and soak them in the sink, can you wring them out enough to still use and remove and replace without too much of a fight?