For colder windy days I’ve found Showa 282-02 waterproof insulated gloves hard to beat. They’re long and you need to keep them sealed to stay dry, but they’re warm grippy and work great with GPs. If you’re going full immersion, that may be a bit tricky. Easy enough to find online and inexpensive. I wear L gloves, but needed XL for a proper fit.
I may need to try something totally waterproof like the Glacier gloves. I’ve found that with the water at 60 degrees, or even the high 50s, I don’t really need gloves at all. My hands feel cold at first, but adjust after a bit. We had a recent cold snap here in Cleveland, and I finally got out there again today. The water temp felt like it dropped a bit more, and with the wind, it made for some cold hands.
First, I put on my fingerless biking gloves, and they were OK, but my hands still got pretty cold. They get wet since I’m using a GP. I popped on a pair of cheap-ish pogies I got off Amazon. They’re a neoprene outer, with a fleece-like material inside. It feels good when dry, but water inevitably gets inside. Even when they were wet, my hands felt pretty decent in there. However, they do greatly inhibit my ability to move my hands up and down the GP.
Maybe waterproof gloves will be better than the 3mm neoprene dive gloves I used last year? Or maybe I need to get thicker dive gloves? I’ve been out with water in the 30s, and once they get wet and soak through, the dive gloves leave my hands darn cold. Better than bare skin, but still cold.
I gave up on “dry gloves” (Nordic Blue) because the inside would inevitably get wet from sweat while surf paddling. Once that happens, my hands (with wool liner) would get cold. With neoprene gloves (which I used to use) also fail to protect over a session because the fingers are isolated/insulated from each other. With mitts, your fingers are together, can be moved and rubbed together. This generates heat and allows the fingers and hand to stay warmer together. With gloves, your fingers and not only isolated but actually have to work against the resistance of the individual finger covering. This gets harder as the fingers get colder. I don’t bother using gloves, except on early in the “shoulder seasons.” For full out winter paddling (surf for me), where immersion of hands in the water is inevitable, mitts have been the only hand protection that allows to me to surf year round in New England.
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We have had our 1st few freezes here and the lake was iced over about 1/4" thick 3 days ago. 2 days ago and yesterday I was out and the ice was gone but the water is cold. I have some paddlers mitts that have the index finger isolated by a “weld” (why they do that I don’t know, because I doubt it helps in any way) I also have a set of Pogies. I paddled with only the mitts and it was never warm, but not so cold as to be painful. I have the Werner Kalliste full carbon and also my wood GL paddle. I own some other paddles with metal shafts and in cold water they suck the heat from your hand fast. The carbon shafts are notably better, but the wood is the best for keeping warm. I have dedicated the whole season to learning how to use the Kalliste well, and so I was using it again in the last 2 days but when my fingers get close to the edge of my tolerance I switch to the GL paddles and that helps a lot in ice water. As it cools more I’ll be using the pogies more and at the very end of the season I am going to be wearing both mitts and pogies.
Very soon after that the water will freeze over and it doesn’t matter what I own after that.
Over the last thirty years of Ohio winter paddling I’ve used neoprene NRS gloves, pogies, and most recently Glacier Gloves with wool liners. The neoprene gloves were not warm, the pogies were too much work and too little dexterity, and the Glacier gloves quickly developed holes where the thumb joined the glove. I thought outside the box that the manufacturers construct for us with the shaping of our expectations and tried $10 work gloves called Kinco Hydroflector #1786P. They’re waterproof and fleece-lined, and available at Tractor Supply and other easily available outlets. I have a few pairs and dry them after I paddle on a Peet Boot & Glove dryer.
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I am going to buy some of those and try them.