Gear Review - Level Off Piste Gloves
- Henry
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
On the hunt for new ski gloves, will Level be able to fill big shoes?
Sadly, my beloved Reusch gloves were beginning to fall apart on me. I had owned them and cared for them for many years - they were, in fact, the first item I bought with any kind of employee discount when I started in the industry, costing my just £60 from the Ellis Brigham shop in St Paul's about three months after I started there.
And here we are, a full 11 years later (Jesus Christ). Time to send them to the gear locker in the sky and look around for what else is good ... or equally cheap, either way.
Enter Level's Off Piste ski gloves, and my review of the same ...
The Brand
You may not have heard of Level before, but that's okay. They don't splay their brand name in offensive colours on the outside of the gloves (mostly) or male extraordinarily bright white, furry gloves for prancing around St Moritz.
In fact, they started as the opposite, a snowboarding brand, in 1989. Founded by Mauro Compagnoni in Bormio, Italy, they bright Italian leather working and craftsmanship to the effortlessly cool - and rapidly growing - snowboard scene.
Level have continued to evolve since then, but stick to those same core principles: creating high quality, simply designed gloves for all levels of skier and snowboarder, and for racing, too.
The Gear
The Level Off Piste gloves are the top-of-the-line big mountain gloves from the brand.
First of all, they are head-to-toe leather. I adore leather, especially in ski gloves. It is an incredibly versatile material that provides really rigorous protection from bumps and scrapes, whilst also being waterproof and windproof.
A slight caveat to that is always that leather has to be continually maintained to preserve those characteristics, but if done so then offers that protection with far less material than, say a Gore-Tex glove.
Inside they are rammed with insulation. I don't think I've ever felt a glove this warm in my life. They feel almost bulky to the touch, such is the volume of protection in there. At the same time, I rarely found it overpowering, never having to desperately strip a glove off a sweaty hand at random points in the day.
I took these to some pretty gnarly places last winter, but it kept up with all of it: howling winds in Scotland, freezing temperatures in Italy, and endless blower powder in Georgia. These were seriously impressive, feeling perhaps like overkill until you really needed them, when they stepped up to the mark.
As a note, Level offer their gloves in half sizes, one of the few brands to do so - this is really useful for making sure you have a glove that works for you, but be sure to measure your hand properly before diving in.
Drawbacks
There was one little thing that sort of annoyed me, and that was the cuffs of the gloves.
The Off Piste can't quite make up their mind as to whether they are an over-the-jacket gauntlet piece, or an under-the-jacket close fit piece. Therefore it sort of did neither; I wore them for a few days as a gauntlet, and a few days tucked under the jacket, and eventually settled on under, but they still took some time to getting used to.
Furthermore, perhaps as a direct result of this, the cuffs were the only part that was too warm! I felt a line of sweat forming after a particularly long morning or tricky descent, something I hadn't ever experienced before.
Final Thoughts
I really, really like this gloves. Fundamentally, they stepped up to whatever the mountain threw at them, with style and ease.
They felt a little bulky at times, but I was sure glad of that when the time came.
