Gear Reviews
Thredbo GORE-TEX® field Study
The GORE-TEX® Glove testing program was conducted in Thredbo Australia for over 10 weeks with 20 ski and snowboard instructors from all different levels and variety of duties.
The season started with unusually warm and dry weather for 3 weeks, and then remained very cold, resulting in some of the best quality snow I have seen in 13 years. Towards the end of the season we had a combination of very heavy rain, a warm wind, and a dust storm. So the winter in Thredbo was perfect for testing out the sample GORE-TEX® gloves.
With my experience of working in very wet conditions, combined with the frequent high winds, I was a little sceptical how the gloves would perform. In fact, I was sure the gloves would not be able to stay dry, as we would normally have to change to a second pair on the very bad days.
Each instructor had 2 pairs of gloves designed for different conditions. One for colder winter conditions, one for warmer spring like conditions. We were asked to try each of the gloves depending on the weather and to try to keep the test gloves in use even on the worst days.
As the co-ordinator, I was concerned for the safety of the instructors with regards to frost bite. So on the wet and cold days, I made sure the instructors could change their gloves if they felt they were putting themselves at risk. I am happy to say that this was a very rare occurrence even with some extreme conditions.
Keeping us dry and warm in the colder and comfortable, not sweaty, in the warmer weather are the most important aspects to consider in a glove.
After that, it is the practical side, like being able to take off and put on easily.
As instructors it is necessary for us to do this several times a day and sometimes in bad weather, so the speed of this is important along with the durability of how they handle things like: screwing in and removing race gates and edgie wedgies (a tool used by instructors for young children to help them learn to ski).
The gloves were worn every day, which ranged from 2 - 9 hours per day, up to 7 days a week. After each day the gloves were then tested with a specialised piece of equipment from Gore to see if they were leaking. If they were, they were removed from the test.
Overall the gloves performed very well through all of the conditions they were put through. Most of our testers were very comfortable with the gloves most of the time.
There was feedback from the testers about the outer shell of the gloves getting wet on the wetter days. As a result the hands become very cold. However when the outer shell did get wet the inner glove didn’t, which was the feature that I thought was going to be the one that failed, because when it gets wet here, it really gets wet!
In summary, I believe the gloves performed very well for the extremely hash conditions that an Australian snow season presents. The fact that the inner glove stays dry on the wet days is the biggest benefit to us as instructors.
The problem with the outer glove certainly needs to be fixed as it made the gloves too cold to wear once they were wet, but with this problem fixed I would certainly recommend GORE-TEX® gloves to people looking for a comfortable glove that performs well in extreme conditions. | 
