How to Keep Ski Goggles From Fogging
Goggles are a vital piece of gear for skiing and snowboarding. Their ability to offer clear visibility by keeping the snow out of your eyes is a huge factor in what enhances your skiing or snowboarding experience. But regardless of the type of goggles you are wearing, they can fog up, keeping your focus from your line and potential obstacles.
While it is not possible to avoid them from fogging up at all times, here’s what you can do to prevent it from happening:
Why Do Goggles Fog Up?
Before you learn how to avoid it, let’s begin by understanding why it happens in the first place. Fogging occurs when the more humid and warmer air on the inside of the lenses comes into contact with the cold lens. This condenses water vapors inside into droplets of water. The droplets build-up on the surface of the lens, reflecting light and obscuring your vision.
How to Keep Ski Goggles From Fogging
Since the fogging of goggles is simply a result of hot air and cold air coming together, the best way to avoid it is to reduce the contrast in temperatures between the outside air and your face. With these following tips, you’ll find it quite easy to circumvent fogging:
Do not put on too many layers of clothing as they will overheat your body during the sport. The warmer your face, the more will be the fogging due to the temperature difference.
Put on your goggles before you step outside. This will bring your goggles to the same temperature as your body. Thus preventing fogging up of the goggles.
Avoid wearing gaiters as they can funnel warm air from your body to the lens of your goggles. So, make sure to keep the air vents on your goggles free.
If you happen to take off your goggles during skiing, do not wipe them clean. Instead, put them upside down to dry to keep yourself from messing with the anti-fog treatment on the lenses.
When looking to buy a pair of goggles look for a good quality pair including:
Spherical lenses: are larger which gives you a greater field of view and also sits further away from your face which makes them much less likely to fog-up (more space for heat to dissipate and lens surface further from your the warm of your face.).
Double-layered lenses: some cheap goggles have a single rather than a double layer lens which creates a thermal barrier and acts as a powerful anti-fog mechanism.
Ventilation: Goggles with good ventilation fog up less because warm air can escape more easily, keeping the temperature stable enough so that warm air won’t condense onto the lens.
Anti-fog coatings: While most goggles promise anti-fog, they don’t all deliver. Mid-high end goggles tend to have better coatings that help prevent condensation from forming and water droplets are more likely to run off rather than a stick. Unfortunately, there is no anti-fog rating to determine this when buying goggles.
Find the ones that sit farther from your face and offer excellent ventilation from the best Lake Tahoe Ski Shop!