I pulled up to the place I planned to get some photos last week, and the thermometer in the dash of my rig said it was one degree outside. The weather app on my phone said the wind speed was 30 miles an hour, and the humidity was hovering around 35 percent. I knew it was going to be cold, but I wasn’t prepared for how cold that humidity and wind would feel.
I had all the goodies to keep me as comfortable as possible – I had a balaclava to keep my ears and face warm; I had snow pants to stay dry below the waist; and I had my super heavy Filson coat with the extreme wool liner to keep my core nice and toasty.
But to shoot pictures, I was going to need to have some dexterity in my fingers. I had my heavy gloves in the camera bag, but I didn’t pull them on over the glove liners I usually wear in order to keep my hands free to operate the camera. And it turns out that was a mistake.
Before I left the truck, I poked a couple of hand warmer packets inside the gloves, and that helped, but by the time I got my photos and got back to the rig, my thumbs were bone white. It got me thinking, why don’t they make the whole darn gloves out of the stuff they make those hand warmer packets out of? You’d just open the packet, shake the gloves for a minute, then pull them on, and the entire gloves would keep your hands warm and toasty all day long.
Come on, hand warmer maker people, help us out a little. Your packets are lovely things, but you need to kick it up a notch. Especially for those of us who live in places where the temperature and wind chill regularly combine to make it feel like we’re wandering around on the back side of the moon.
