How to Choose Gloves for Kilimanjaro

Choosing gloves for Kilimanjaro can make a big difference in keeping your hands warm and comfortable during the trek. Just like layering your clothing, you should also have a couple types of gloves.

Choose Gloves for Kilimanjaro

To clarify, climbing Kilimanjaro is trekking, not mountaineering. Therefore, you won’t have your hands in the snow. But it does get cold at night—especially summit night. Furthermore, the temperatures can be below zero. Keeping your hands warm is important to making the summit. If you don’t have the correct gloves your freezing hands will make it miserable.

With that in mind, here are our recommendations for different types of gloves you should consider bringing for your climb.

Lightweight gloves

These gloves should be dual-purpose, providing warmth and protection for your hands as you hike and use trekking poles. Look for gloves made from materials such as silk, wool, lycra, polyester, nylon, or fleece that are both durable and warm.

Mid-weight or wind-blocking gloves

These gloves should be thicker and more durable than lightweight gloves, and should be able to block the wind, keeping your fingers warm and dry. Many of these gloves also allow for touchscreen usage.

Heavy gloves

These gloves should be able to keep your hands warm, dry, and block the wind, and should be made from materials such as Gore-Tex with a liner. They can be ski or snowboarding gloves, mittens, or mountaineering/trekking gloves made of leather, goatskin, or nylon.

Glove Examples

With that in mind, here are a few different types of gloves you should consider bringing for your climb.

Light

Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Outdoor Research Protective Lightweight Glove
Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Women's Outdoor Research Vigor Midweight Sensor Glove

Mid

Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Columbia Men's Maxtrail Helix Gloves
Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Arc'teryx Unisex Venta Gloves

Heavy

Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Women's Black Diamond Mission Gloves
Gloves for Kilimanjaro
Mountain Hardwear Cloud Bank

Glove Companies

There are many companies that make gloves. Here are a list of a few.

Glove Fit

Make sure your gloves fit properly before heading to Kilimanjaro. View the image to see how to measure your hand. then use those measurements with the chart below.

Glove Size Equivalents

Some manufacturers indicate glove sizes by number and others by letters standing for Small, Medium, Large, etc.

We always indicate the size of a pair of gloves the same way the manufacturer does. Use this table to translate between “letter sizes” and “number sizes”.

glove size chart

Sizes for UNISEX Gloves and Mittens
XXS XS S M L XL XXL XXXL
Hand Circumference (inches) 6.5 7 7.5 8.5 9 9.5 10 11
Sizes for WOMEN’S Gloves and Mittens
XXS XS S M L XL XXL XXXL
Hand Circumference (inches) 6 6.5 7 7.5 8
MEN’S SIZES
XXS XS S M L XL XXL XXXL
Hand Circumference (inches) 7 7 ½ – 8 8 ½ – 9 9 ½ – 10 10 ½ – 11 11 ½ – 12

Other Glove Considerations

In additional to getting the right glove, a couple other items you want to also think about.

1. Color: While black matches everything, they can get lost easier. Especially at night, in the dark. They are also more difficult to find in your duffel back.

2. Clips: to keep one glove from getting lost, we recommend purchasing gloves with clips so you can keep them together.

3. Liners: If your hands get really cold, you may want to go a size larger so you can fit liners inside your gloves.

4. Mittens: If you choose to go with liners, a mitten may be a better option for you so it’ll easily slide inside.

5. Touchscreen compatible. You’ll be taking many photos and videos along the way. When its really cold, you aren’t going to want to remove your gloves. We recommend a glove that has touch screen.

Smart Phone Settings

If you don’t have touchscreen compatible gloves, then we remind the following settings for your smart phone.

Android: You can take photos by pushing the power button and the volume buttons.

iPhone: Go to Settings>Accessibility>Touch and assign one of the Back Tap actions to open the camera. Then press the side button once, and double (or triple) tap the back to open the camera. Finally, use the volume button to take a photo.

Touchscreen gloves for Kilimanjaro
Burton Touchscreen Glove Liners
Mittens for Mount Kilimanjaro
Women's Burton GORE-TEX Mittens

Final Thoughts

We hope this article helps you choose gloves for Kilimanjaro, ones that’ll be functional, keep your hands warm and dry, and of course look fashionable in all your photos.

Are you ready to book your trip of a lifetime?

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