Outdoor Research Splitter Gloves

Splitter Gloves are synthetic-leather “tape” gloves for hand jamming. As someone who has used real tape gloves on and off, and on and off and on and off, I can attest to the Splitter Gloves’ worthiness and utility.

Outdoor Research Splitter Gloves | outdoorresearch.com | $39 | ★★★★

Splitter Gloves are synthetic-leather “tape” gloves for hand jamming. As someone who has used real tape gloves on and off, and on and off and on and off, I can attest to the Splitter Gloves’ worthiness and utility. Unlike time-consuming-to-make tape gloves that you throw away after a few days’ use, Splitter Gloves go on and off in seconds and are reusable.

Splitter Gloves aren’t the first purpose-built tape-glove replacements, but they are the best I’ve used. Other gloves are rubber, and I’ve never liked their stiffness and bulky feel. Splitter Gloves are softer, feel like tape and are so innocuous I often forget I’m wearing them. In terms of friction, they also grip similarly to tape, and they take chalk. Coverage is also about what you’d get from a standard tape job: Protection is good for thin- to cupped-hands-sized cracks. For fist cracks, you need a few wraps of tape to cover your thumb knuckles.

Durability is fair to good, depending on how you take care of the gloves. The fabric itself shows only minimal scuffing after approximately 800 feet of crack climbing, but one glove did slightly delaminate at a seam and the other one started to peel apart at the Velcro wrist strap. A daub of  SuperGlue or Barge Cement made quick repairs.

ABOUT THE RATING: The gloves would get five stars if they cost 10 bucks less and they held up better.

—Duane Raleigh