Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Glove

By Erin Trail

Initial Thoughts

The Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Glove is a 2-in-1 glove that is super warm and highly durable.

Detailed Review

Like many women, I struggle with cold fingers when I ski.  I asked to review the Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Gloves because they looked like the perfect solution to frozen fingers.

Glove Features:

• 2-1 backcountry kit glove, with lightweight uphill liner and waterproof insulated shell
• Engineered with Gore-Tex, offering enduring weather protection, comfort, balanced heat transfer, and optimum moisture management
• Primaloft Gold insulation with Cross Core is fused with aerogel technology for the highest level of warmth in any conditions
• Goat leather adds durability and abrasion resistance
• GoreGrip technology bonds liner and shell to prevent movement and provide ultimate grip and dexterity
• Full gauntlet with quick release adjustment and two-stage closure
• Fully functional liner glove with goat leather palm and wind resistant laminated stretch woven shell
• Soft nose wipe on the back of the thumb
• Webbing hang loop on ring fingers for easy dry hanging
• Removable wrist tether made from reclaimed waste fibers

Testing conditions:

• A cold, snowy, windy single-digit day with sub-zero windchill
• A sunny day with single-digits in the morning, warming to 15-20 degrees in the afternoon
• All kinds of resort terrain, ranging from groomers to bumps, trees, and powder

Fit and Function

The Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Glove is a larger glove.  It features a gauntlet cuff, meaning that the cuff of the glove is designed to overlap on top of the wrist cuff of your jacket.  This feature fit well, nicely fitting over the sleeve of my Mountain Hardware Cloud Bank Jacket.  They also have a retention system, to ensure that you don’t accidentally drop the glove while on a chairlift.

I have smaller hands and requested a size medium.  These are my first 2-in-1 gloves and I didn’t find the fit great.  The inner gloves fit well, but the combination of two layers of gloves wasn’t great.  I found getting my fingers positioned correctly to be a challenge.  If I was wearing the inner gloves and inserting them into the outer gloves, I had a very hard time getting my pinky fingers aligned into the outer glove and inserted completely.  There was a lot of bulk and not a lot of room to get the positioning correct.  Eventually, the pinky inner glove worked its way into the correct spot as I skied, but my hands felt uncomfortable until that happened.

I found these gloves to be easiest to put on if the inner gloves were already inside the shell glove and properly positioned. This way, all the fingers were already lined up correctly and you just put your hand inside and went back to skiing. Unfortunately, this meant that I usually chose to not wear the liner gloves alone (i.e. if I stopped mid-run to use my phone or if I was eating a snack on the lift).  That meant I had bare hands while I was doing finer movements – and got cold hands.

The Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Glove features two loops (one loop on each glove layer).  Without these loops, the gloves would be really hard to put on, due to the bulkiness of the layers.  The loops are sized so they’re large enough (just barely) to fit a gloved finger inside the loop to assist in donning the other glove.

I didn’t have great finger dexterity with these gloves.  To be fair – I don’t have great finger dexterity in any glove (but I can still dream).  I was able to adjust the buckles on my ski boots, but any fine dexterity actions (unzipping pockets, unwrapping snacks) couldn’t be done with the full set of gloves on.

Now onto the great things – they kept my hands SUPER WARM.  I was really impressed with them on my really cold and windy ski day. All day long, my fingers were super comfortable. I didn’t have to stop to warm up at the lodge or break out a set of glove warmers.

The Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Gloves are also really well made.  The inner glove’s palms are solid goat leather.  These liners would also work nicely as driving or hanging out gloves.  They look and feel really nice.  The outer glove has a slick inner liner (to make inserting the inner glove easier). The palms, fingertips, and knuckles of the outer gloves are also goat leather – making them extra durable. These gloves are built to last.

Closing Thoughts

The Mountain Hardwear Powzilla Gore-Tex Kit Glove is a well made and designed glove that delivers on warmth.  The downside is that these gloves are bulky, hard to put on, and don’t really allow for fine finger movements. These gloves are going to stay in my ski bag for the super cold, windy, snowy days.  I loved that they kept my fingers warm on single-digit days and I know that they’re constructed to last many seasons of use.  I also like how the inner glove can double as a nice casual or driving glove, giving a little bang-for-the-buck multipurpose use to them.

Erin Trail

Erin Trail’s hobby is collecting hobbies. She’s a 5th Generation Coloradan and grew up exploring the outdoors on family camping trips and hikes.  Her first backpacking trip was at eight years old to Grizzly Reservoir – she proudly carried all of her own gear those 3 miles from the main parking lot to the Reservoir.

Erin is an adult-onset athlete who started as a Masters Swimmer and then developed into a triathlete.  She completed 5 Ironman races and nearly 20 x 70.3 distance Ironman races, including the World Championship in Lahti, Finland, in 2023.  Somewhere along her triathlon journey, she picked up a deep love of cycling.

Cycling encouraged her to see landscapes in a new way, learn new skills and to develop self reliance; now she often goes and does Type 2 rides just to see if she can do it.  She’s got all the bikes: gravel, mountain, fat bike, time trial and road.

She is even known to combine her love of camping and cycling and go off on solo 24 hour overnight bikepacking trips in the mountains of Colorado. In addition to bikes, she teaches yoga, lifts weights, skis, SUPs and has recently purchased a campervan.

Erin is a former Montana park ranger with a degree in environmental engineering.  She loves getting into technical details while putting her gear (and herself) through the paces. She shares her home in Colorado with her husband, Will, and her 3 cats (Zipper, Brewtus, and Simcoe).

2025 brings some exciting things.  Erin has qualified to be on Team USA for USA Triathlon and will be competing in a World Championship off-road triathlon in Pontevedra, Spain in June. To prepare for this event, she’s got several mountain bike races and training weekends planned in the months leading up to the big day.  Additionally, she’s racing Ironman Boise 70.3 in July.  Once her race schedule closes out in July, she’ll be moving to more adventure based activities (bikepacking, vanlife, and mountain bike festivals).

When not adventuring, she can be found on a sunny patio somewhere, drinking beers with her husband.