By Ted Bendixson

I'll be honest. I'm not much for multi-fingered snowboarding gloves. I find that they tend to make my hands colder when the thermostat dips below zero. So I usually opt for the big 'ol mitts. Now that I've tried out the POC Wrist Freeride Gloves, I'm beginning to rethink my stance on that. I love these things for a number of reasons. They're warm, they're durable, and they don't constrict my movement like a lot of other leather gloves. These are pipe gloves that actually keep your hands warm.

So how do they do it? If you aren't aware, POC has a history as a research and development company. They originally started off in Sweden making top-of-the-line protective gear for a number of different action sports. They're as much in the skiing and snowboarding scenes as they are in biking. Their goal is to research new technologies and develop products that will make people safer while doing the sports they love.

As a research and development company, POC is constantly looking at different materials they can source to make their products better. With the Wrist Freeride Glove, you're getting a combination of goatskin leather, waterproof softshell material, Thinsulate, and a Bemberg microfiber lining. Very few gloves bring so many high quality materials together.

What I noticed right off the bat is the ability to move my hands more freely with these gloves. Sure, there are pipe gloves and other cotton insulated gloves that offer the same sort of freedom, but they tend to wear out really fast (and they aren't that warm). The POC Wrist Freeride gloves cost around $120, but here's the thing. They will last you three to four times longer than most gloves. That's because they are all leather around the palms of your hands, the one place that will wear out the fastest.

So you can pay $70 three times, or you can just pay $120 once. It's really up to you. A lot of the lower quality cotton insulated gloves will blow apart in less than a few months. These gloves are double-stitched all the way around, and they have extra padding in the areas where you're most likely to scrape your hands against the snow after falling. You'd have to try really really hard to destroy these gloves while snowboarding.

With a glove, you want three basic things: durability, dexterity, and warmth. In this respect, the POC Wrist Freeride delivers hands down. Will I ever return to those mitts? Maybe for the nostalgia factor. Otherwise, it's looking like I'll be sticking with these. And believe me, that's going to be for a long long while.

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