One of my pet hates is cold & numb fingers when riding.
I had chance recently to try out Alpinestars C1 Windstopper glove in some typical Tasmanian winter like weather and I came away impressed. In fact these are now my go-to gloves when the temperatures are heading for single-digits and below.
I’ve always tried to avoid wearing winter gloves when riding because I’ve always felt they were too fat and restricted my ability to control the motorcycle through the levers and hand controls.
Not so with these gloves. The C1 is a perfect balance for me to be able to feel the controls and provide enough protection from the cold.
Key features for these gloves are:
- Windstopper material is very effective at doing what the name suggests – wind stopping! I found comfortable wearing these gloves right down to temperatures of 5 degrees celcius.
- They are not waterproof but do keep the moisture at bay for a while. Even once your hands get wet they still help keep them warm by deflecting the wind.
- The knuckles feature some hardish protection without adding much bulk.
- I normally wear a size large but I did find these gloves to be a little too big and felt a bit loose. Also because there isn’t any form of tightening around the cuff they can feel loose.
- The long knitted cuffs do an excellent job of covering that bare skin around your wrists. Because we have many veins close to the surface of our skin here at the wrists it is very important to cover here if you are going to have any hope of retaining core warmth.
Pros
- They are very minimal in their design so not at all bulky to wear and I felt in total control of the bike even in gnarly single track style riding.
Cons
- They aren’t waterproof. For brutal wet winter weather you are probably still going to better off with full on waterproof gloves that include a GoreTex or similar lining. Another alternative are those massive “elephant ears” handguard muffs that go right over your controls. I’ve not tried those though so I can’t offer any advice there.
- The gloves don’t work with touchscreens on your Smartphone.
Check all the specs on the Alpinestars website