KristofferSzilas

I’m sponsored by the Danish glove manufacturer GripGrab and have tested every single glove they have in their collection. I have now narrowed it down to three gloves that I can honestly recommend for climbing:

For mixed climbing the main thing is that the glove is tight fitting and gives a strong grip. For this my favourite glove is GripGrab XC Touring glove. If you fall off a route while wearing this glove there are no one to blame but yourself, because the tight fit and the wrist strap makes it virtually impossible to slip out of it. This is the glove I wear when I want to climb at my physical limit as on sport mixed routes.

For ice climbing the glove should be waterproof and warm, but also have a good grip that does not slip in the palm of the hand when you swing the ice tools. For this purpose I prefer GripGrab Polaris. It is a reasonably cheap glove, but it performs really well on frozen waterfalls and the palm is super sticky making for precise sticks with the ice tools.

For alpine climbing you primarily want warmth. Although GripGrab does not yet make a glove designed specifically for this use, they have a few gloves for skiing. Gripgrab’s Alpine 3-in-1 actually fits the bill for alpine climbing pretty well. It features removable fleece liners, which makes drying out the gloves much easier and they actually also have a very good grip. The only downside of this glove is that it is not waterproof, but it still works great on frozen water falls if you bring a spare set of liners with you on the route so you can change to dry ones (two pairs of liners are included when you buy this glove). It is not warm enough for alpine winter climbing, but for alpine routes in summer they sure work fine and the entire team I was in Kyrgyzstan with this summer used them on their first ascents.