Legendary Extremity Wear

Josh Huskey, United States Marine Core, Staff Sergeant

Flame Resistant Gloves

"The experience you are about to hear about took place in a survival school - 13 days in the mountains ranging from 6500 ft to around 8,000 ft. We trained in wet, 'freeze then thaw' snow, and we also trained below the snow line in temps around high of 65deg and low of 25deg Fahrenheit."

When I actually had the time to go out and practice what it would take in a actual survival situation I realized one piece of gear you never read about to include in your kit is GLOVES.  And no matter what environment and what atmospherics you encounter, I cannot think of a time where Gloves would not come in greatly needed.  The advantages of gloves talks for themselves when you are actually out there. But I believe that HANZ gloves have a huge advantage over other gloves and here is why.

We got these gloves in conjunction with old military black all leather gloves. And in my limited years I have used a vast array of overly expensive “state of the art” military style gloves. Now don’t by any means am I saying that there are no other gloves out there and that certain gloves won’t do good in certain events. I am saying that HANZ gloves were greatly a blessing in a unreal survival situation.

My knowledge gained from this course is this; you have to have the ability to use your hands to do a lot of things. You lose the ability to use your hands if you get dry skin in combinations with cuts, abrasions, blisters, and cold injuries. You can limit almost all of these with any gloves. But the HANZ gloves held up. They didn’t fray, nor rip or melt.  And these gloves were very good for actually working with your hands. The dexterity with these gloves is amazing compared to a lot of gloves that are not new out of the box. And most of the other gloves need maintenance or they will become tough brittle and start to crack, or dexterity will be lost almost after the first time you use them.

The most important reason why I choose these gloves is because of one main situation, the ability to dry them quickly. Everyone should know that in the cold, if you get wet, you probably will get injured in a survival situation.  You need to keep the clothes you have and the parts of your body dry and maintained. The other gloves that fell apart or the black leather gloves that you try to dry out by the fire soon either became hard as a rock and cracked, shrank or melted. The HANZ gloves did none of these and for that reason we could continue to use them and abuse them the whole course. 

And with a final note I would like to say that most of our other gear we had, the water proof gear, and military gear needed to be traded out because of damage. Mostly fire damage and wear and tear but not one pair of gloves that I could tell, needed to be replaced. That says a lot.