ProView – C.A.M.P. G Crest Gloves Review

My climbing partner Adam often mocks me for bringing 4 or 5 pairs of gloves on every winter climb we go on. While I normally only use 2 or 3 of these pairs, I love having a quiver of gloves on hand to make sure I have the right piece for whatever conditions require. That’s why I was excited to hear that CAMP had a couple of new pairs of gloves to test out this spring, and the new G Crest was one of them. A new pair of gloves is always a welcome addition to the pile as old ones get abused past the point of usefulness, and up until these gloves, I had no prior experience with CAMP gloves. I am happy to report that the new G Crest will definitely be taking a front spot in the roster for this next winter.

Fit

When it comes to gloves, I have a pretty average hand for my size. I wear a medium in most brands for my “performance” gloves, and a size large if I want things to be a bit roomier for comfort gloves. Some gloves use the more technical sizing measurement of your hand’s circumference around the first knuckle, and by this metric I measure 8 to 8.5 inches, depending on the day. These G Crest gloves fit great for me in the standard size medium that I would choose for gloves like these. I will say that fresh out of the box, both gloves felt a little tight in the fingers, especially when it came to the thumb’s range of motion, but years of glove experience told me this would likely break in. Sure enough, after around 30 minutes of wearing the gloves and moving my hands around, the leather softened a bit and all sense of restriction went away. The finger lengths all felt great to me, and I did not have any baggy extra room at the ends of the fingers, which would contribute to cold digits.

Construction

The G Crest gloves are made of a goatskin leather all the way from palm to the back of the knuckles, with a soft patch sewn on the back of the thumb to facilitate wiping of glasses (or your nose), and a neoprene cuff and backing for added comfort and flexibility on the wrist. It includes a DRYZONE waterproof membrane that worked great to keep my hands dry, even when groveling uphill through deep, wet spring snow. Like most good climbing gloves, the fingers are a “box” sewn shape that avoids any strange pressure points and allows for a more natural grip with the gloves.

One of the standouts I found with the construction of this glove was the inside liner material. I was not able to determine the exact material it was made of, so I am just going to refer to it as some sort of fleece. Whatever it is, it felt great on the skin and seemed to have great friction to avoid any slipping around in the glove when you needed a firm hold on something. At the same time, the liner didn’t seem to turn inside out when you pulled a sweaty hand out of the glove, a problem I find common in many other gloves, which can make getting them back on a massive pain.

Features

One of the most obvious features of this glove was also the most surprising for me. As someone who has always disliked wrist leashes on his gloves, I often remove them first thing if a glove comes with them. Since the leashes on the G Crest are not removable (without cutting them off), I figured they deserved a good ol’ college try. Contrary to my prejudices, I actually loved these leashes and found no issue with them. Where previous leashes had felt annoying around my wrist and left the glove dangling too far away, these leashes disappeared from any sensation when worn, and they were much shorter than any others I had experienced. This meant that instead of bungee jumping and twisting around in the wind, the G Crest leashes kept the gloves close at hand and ready for use when I needed to pop them off to check my phone for something.

The other standout feature of this glove is the Velcro closure for the cuff. I’ve had many gloves that tightened down at the wrist to keep snow from entering, but the G Crest does it better. With an elastane band on the Velcro strap, it allows you to tension down the cuff without the worry of choking the strap around your wrist and cutting off blood flow. The standard winter glove add-ons of a clippable hanging loop on the fingers, a mini buckle to attach the pair together, and a wide loop at the cuff to facilitate pulling the glove on round out the feature set to give you a glove with everything you need and nothing you don’t.

Application

During the spring season, I was able to get this glove out on several missions to ski and climb, and would say the glove performs amazingly as an all-round crusher in these categories. On cold alpine starts with sharp winds, it kept my hands warm, and when plunging cold carbon tools into deep snow, I remained perfectly dry. I will say that this glove became a bit warm when the sun began to bake the glaciers I was on, and I will be excited to take it out this coming winter into the cold Canadian Rockies for some more ice climbing, as I suspect it will work well for all but the most frigid days there. In all honesty, as a glove that did not come out of CAMP’s dedicated ice climbing line, I would say that the G Crest felt great when hanging off the tools, and it earned its spot in my personal ice climbing lineup.

The Final Word

The G Crest gloves are part of the “all-round winter use” line from CAMP, and while I would say they live up to that category well with their versatility, they avoid the “master-of-none” moniker that often comes with the territory. They manage to include the comfort and ease of use you would want from a ski glove and provide the dexterity and ruggedness of a good ice climbing glove, a feat difficult to pack into one glove while maintaining warm and dry hands. Considering the range of conditions and applications this glove can tackle in one well-made package, I would recommend anyone pick up a pair of these for their next winter season.

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