Cold feet... warm heart?

One thing I try to avoid while doing fieldwork is getting cold. It makes everything seem longer and more trying when you are cold. If you are warm, you can go all day in the winter and enjoy being outside. It's not so easy if your hands or feet are freezing.

On that note, I'm not sure why winter hikers for men and women are so different, but I can tell you that men's hikers seem to be made with much higher quality than anything I can get for myself. After working in snow for a month in 'winter' hikers (and consequently, freezing my feet for a month), I broke down and bought snowboots. Huge rubber bottomed leather topped boots with a removable liner - they showed promise.

I worked with the PhD student often, tracking squirrels all day in the snow. Me in my honkin' snowboots and him in his winter hikers. Me in huge overall snowpants and him in lined khakis with gators. Me in a huge winter jacket and him in a light raincoat. Me in a hat and him with a bare head. Basically I was dressed for a blizzard and he was dressed for cool fall weather. Guess who ALWAYS got cold and started to complain? Guilty as charged.

Besides his man hikers, the other thing he wore that I envied were a pair of long leather mitts. They were from Mark's Work Wearhouse and I developed a false hope that maybe, just maybe, they would carry them in an x-small or small. I finally broke down and dropped by Mark's after one extra-frosty day in the woods. I found the mitts and searched the sizes. Medium and larger... probably all sold out I thought to myself. So I found an employee and asked to get a pair in - apparently Medium is the smallest size. Who makes mittens from a M up? Men's mitten companies, obviously.

So, to date I have not found comparable products... but I keep the hope that I was not the only woman requesting comparable winter hikers and mittens, and that maybe that information will get passed on to the powers that be. Maybe then women can get some decent winter work clothing.