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Clothing - Cold Conditions
“Mister, you've got a lot of hard bark on you walkin' down here like this…” - Richard Boone's character Grimes, in Hombre
When it comes to paddling in cold weather/water you're going to need something more than hard bark on you.
Wetsuits
- Intro Wetsuits: The Basics
- How to Be Happy in Cold Water partially an ad for Seventh Wave Wetsuits but has a lot of good information
- Sources Wetsuit Brands/Outlet Stores
- Discussions: Wetsuits vs Drysuits vs ??
- Notice that these discussions tilt toward wetsuits over drysuits, but they are generally from paddlers in the Bellingham, WA. area. In somewhat colder places where they do a lot of downwinding, like farther north into Canada, Sweden, Norway… the videos indicate that drysuit use is more popular. Some veteran Lake Superior paddlers occasionally use thicker (5/4mm) wetsuits with hoods for their coldest weather. Undoubtedly newer wetsuit construction has made wetsuits more practical. We hope we will be able to round out these discussions to include a greater variety of views.
- Examples of Wetsuit/Drysuit Choices In Various Cold Water Locales (currently these include a few examples where drysuits are also used, but we could definitely use more input from drysuit paddlers in colder places like the North Sea)
- Liners/Rashguards
- Cleaning After Use in Salt Water
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Drysuits
Judging by the significant number of serious downwinding videos from Scandinavia where paddlers are wearing drysuits, those folks have clearly come to terms with strenuous paddling in drysuits. Beyond the obvious tips for cooling down, we hope we will get more insight from those paddlers about how they manage temperature with drysuit paddling.
Footwear
It's not unusual for surfskiers to not use footstraps (e.g. step on top of them) when they use cold water footwear that is wide enough to make keeping one's bootied feet side-by-side under straps difficult or impossible.
- Paddling.com Footwear List this is every kind of water footwear they review - not just for cold weather/water.
Gloves/Mittens/Pogies
- Discussion
- Options
- Lists
- Brands
- Brača-sportLightweight Pogies USA Source, New Zealand Source
- Immersion Research Gloves & Pogies USA
- Kayaktiv Pogies Sweden
- Lomo Gloves & Pogies UK
- Pogie'srus Pogies Canada
- Prolimit Polar 2 Layer Netherlands
- Reed Pogies UK
- Snapdragon Pogies (we're getting a safety warning from the company website so we don't include a direct link here)
Hats & Caps
Hats can be particularly handy for adjusting comfort because they often can be easily carried on your person or on your boat and put-on/taken-off as comfort varies from exertion, fatigue and weather conditions.
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After Paddle Options
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