Two seasons ago we reviewed a pair of 10peaks gloves for the first time, the Mount Tonsa, and the past year I have been wearing one of the big brothers, the Mount Bowlen.
10Peaks is named after the mountain chain Ten Peaks in Banff National Park. Each model glove is named after one those peaks. 10Peaks stands for “high-quality glove making with fit, ease of use, durability, and dexterity” as their primary goals.
The gloves are fabricated from a variety of materials, the palm of High Performance Buffalo Leather, the outer shell on the top of hand from a soft shell with a breathable membrane. The liner of the gloves is Thinsulate. The cuffs are long and wid and will fit over the cuffs of your jacket.
The most striking element of this and all 10 Peaks glove is their proprietary C-Zip tech. This is a zipper that runs over the back of your hand. When you zip it open it’s easy to pop out your hands out of the glove, without having to take the gloves off. So you can access your phone, or GoPro, set your bindings or grab hold, of that quick glühwein. (not too much). The cuffs of the gloves remain in place and when you have done what you need to do, in go your hands and zip it up.
So a really flexible and easy system that, because it is so easy, you will find yourself using very often. There is one slight drawback to that, namely that every time you zip out, you will lose all the warmth in the glove. Besides that, it is easier to get snow inside the glove, what happened quite often. So you have to be sure to get the snow out again before zipping up.
I am a snowboarder, and do a lot of filming as I ride, so, on the one hand, this flexibility is really a godsend for me. It is fast, it is easy and I will never lose a glove. What I did encounter is that the gloves come in touch with snow very often during my days in the mountains, and they do get a bit too wet at a certain moment. The wet does not go all the way through to my hands, but it did make the gloves heavy and bit less comfortable. They did dry reasonably quickly so that was a good thing. I will be treating them with a bit of leather grease before I head into the mountains again to see if that will help.
But if you are a regular boarder that doesn’t sit in the snow too often or a skiër you will hardly run into this drawback. What I really like about the gloves is that they are pre-curved, so it really fits the natural position of your hand, and certainly when you grip something like a pole it just grabs very pleasantly. Again for skiërs that is an added bonus.When dry the gloves isolate quite well, keeping your hands nice and warm. The Trigger Finger model has as an added benefit that your outer three fingers help keep each other warm. The gloves are very comfortable and again, very flexible and all but impossible too loose.Take into account that if you buy the white version of the gloves, which I think look very nice, they will look a bit worn and dirty earlier than black versions. The cuff holds a little pocket for small stuff, such as an extra SD card.
In conclusion, we can say that the 10Peaks Mount Bowlen are good winter sports glove, providing enough warmth for regular alpine temperatures and circumstances. Not very waterproof so that’s something to watch out for. The fit is great, they are very comfortable and the flexibility of the C-Zip is unique to these 10Peak gloves.
