The search for a warm winter mitten

So I take the bus. I have to stand outside for around 10 minutes at both of my waits, and when the weather really sucks the buses are usually late and I have to wait even longer.

For some reason I can find everything else warm but not mittens. I asked all my friends on face book and I got a lot of different suggestions. I'm always hesitant to go out and spend a bunch of money but I was getting a lot more sick of having cold and frozen hands all the time... SO I decided that I was going to go out and buy all the different gloves suggested and find something that would finally work. I was tiered of always having cold hands! (Of course I made sure I bought them at places I could do returns..Having 5 pairs of gloves that didn't work wasn't part of this plan!)

So I thought I would share this all with you. It's a relativity boring post but I thought if you're like me and have tiny hands with no fat on them to keep you warm, and sort of bad circulation this might really be helpful!

I first tried these. They were $90 gloves so I thought for sure they would be pretty good. Nope. My fingers (at -20C) got cold within 5 minutes and freezing within 10 minutes. They were by far the nicest gloves but that doesn't matter when you have no fingers!

Next I tried some Hot Paws from Costco. They were $30 but I heard they were like having heaters on your hands. Nope. Again, no good. To be honest they were a little bit better then the North Face gloves, they lasted a couple minutes more but still not good enough.
Next a tried a pair of mittens from The Bay. I can't find an exact picture but they were similar to these but darker purple and they had fur around the cuffs. They were Thinsulate 40 Gram mitts which I was told is a great rating and those should for sure do the job. They were the cheapest of all the gloves I found (on sale too) at $20. I tried them out for a couple of day, same cold testing and same results; no good at all! They lasted about 3 minutes at -20C before my fingers were cold.

The four try was a pair of Dragon Fly Thinsulate mittens from Sports Check. They were 100 Gram gloves so I was sure they had to do better then the other gloves. Nope. About the same: after 5 minutes my fingers were cold and after about 8 minutes they were freezing. Even curling them up in a ball inside the mittens didn't do much at that point. When I brought them back "Is there anything wrong with them?", "They're not warm". The cashier wasn't too sure what to say, but at least I was honest right.

Ok, so my last effort? Go to MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op) and try and find something there. I spent about 30 minutes trying on all the different gloves and trying to find something that seemed that it would work better then the rest (it's amazing how little labeling is on these things!). Finally I decided on a pair of Gordini mittens. By this time I had the other four pairs of gloves going through their tests so this pair was last and boy could I tell the difference when I got to these! No, they don't work for more then half an hour out standing in the cold in -30, but at that point, I find that not much does! They work well for the 10-20 minutes I'm standing outside in -20 to -30. My hands start go get cold at the 10 minute mark and at about 20 minutes (if I haven't moved my fingers around or tried anything to keep them warm) they start to really feel frozen. But you know, considering where I live and all the other tries I've had with gloves and how poorly they did I'm taking this as a success. $40 after tax, not too bad for toasty warm fingers.