Even though many snowmobilers these days wear motocross-style helmets, especially in the West, snowmobiling when it's cold isn't normally a big deal because you're usually working fairly hard while riding-at least in the mountains.
However, riding when it's bitter cold and wearing a motocross-style helmet can be miserable. To protect their skin in exposed areas that motocross-style helmets don't cover, sledders turned to duct tape. Duct tape is a fairly effective protection against the wind that hits your exposed face. But eventually you have to take the duct tape off and that's where the real pain begins.
Randy Nagel at Pro-Vue sent us some of his Face Tape. Man, where has that stuff been all our life? Now might be a good time to come clean, though. We had the Face Tape for an entire season before we even opened the package. Then we headed on a trip to ride the new Ski-Doo sleds in Ontario, Canada, and happened to take our package of Face Tape along.
That was a good thing because it was minus-18 degrees F and we were racing sleds across a frozen lake at 80 or so mph, which dropped the windchill down to about a zillion degrees below zero. We broke out the Face Tape and used it during the ride and what a difference it made.
Face Tape, a hypoallergenic foam tape, insulates against the wind and cold and is thicker than duct tape. It covers your face basically from the bottom of your eyes down below the bottom edge of the opening in a motocross-style helmet, just above your mouth. That means it covers most of your nose and pretty much all of your cheeks.
Highmarks
Who knew something so simple and easy could make such a big difference when riding while it's bitter cold? Wherever the Face Tape didn't cover our face, like up near the temples, we got a little frostbite. Where the Face Tape did cover, our skin was fine and protected. We won't say it wasn't still cold-it was-but we fared a lot better than had we not been wearing the Face Tape.
After we tried the Face Tape in Ontario we couldn't help but kick ourselves for not having taken the Face Tape on previous trips when it was so dang cold.
Face Tape is easy to put on and your goggles just sit right on top. Speaking of goggles, we also noticed that they didn't fog up after we used the Face Tape.
Tumbles
It turns out we didn't take enough Face Tape to Ontario because when some other riders saw what we had and were wearing, they asked for some and we shared. Other than that, Face Tape is a great idea.
How To Get Ahold Of Pro-Vue Face Tape
Contact Pro-Vue (800) 548-8354 or www.pro-vue.com. Face Tape comes in a package of 12 pieces and retails for $10.