On the surface, this post is almost silly.  But I assure you, the only thing silly about it, is that the industry hasn’t gotten their act together and done this themselves.  Alas, the industry is frequently swayed toward form before function.  Anyhow…

…If you’re wearing your ski jacket, then you’re probably wearing your gloves and you probably have all you can do to access all of the zippered compartments of your jacket or day pack with your maimed manual dexterity.  They give you about an inch of string or fabric to clutch onto with a finger with is like two and half inches thick.  OK, I exaggerate slightly, but you get the idea.

There is a simple solution to this.  Grab you’re favorite ski jacket, buy a few feet of p-cord from your local mountain shop and tie longer zipper pulls onto each of the zippers.  If you plan to be outside for more than  a few hours at a time, you’ll thank yourself that you have arranged your gear in such a way that you never have to remove your gloves.

Cut about 8 inches of p-cord off and loop it through the metal zipper tab.

Tie the biggest burliest knot you can so that you’re gloves or mittens have more surface to grasp onto.

I’ve used an 8-knot because it’s easily tied, neat, and bulky.  They tend not to pull out too often either.

As a backup measure and to add extra surface area, I tied a second 8-knot with the slack ends of the p-cord.

After you’ve cut the p-cord, you can fuse the frayed ends with a lighter to prevent them from raveling.

Check ’em out in action.  This can be done with back packs, and tents too.

These like the burliest gloves ever.  And the pit zips are hard enough to get to with no gloves at all…

And that’s it.  Go play outdoors all day without getting cold fingers!


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