Staying Warm While Shoveling Snow – Winter Storm 2026

The storm had already passed. That’s when the real work began.

If you live in Baltimore, you know the drill. It wasn’t just snow; it was a layer of crust hiding a sheet of solid ice underneath. I wasn’t just pushing a shovel; I was chopping, digging, and breaking up a driveway that had turned into a glacier.

I waited until the afternoon sun started hitting the pavement to help with the melt, but that created a new problem: Sweat management. When you are swinging a shovel at ice in the sunlight, your body generates massive heat, but the air is still freezing. If your gear doesn’t breathe, you get wet. If you get wet, you freeze the second you stop moving.

I didn’t wear a $500 technical system. I wore a “Frankenstein” loadout that included a hoodie made of recycled bottles, jeans from Walmart, and a fleece shirt that is literally as old as my car.

The Frankenstein Loadout: The Specs

Here is the breakdown of the mismatched kit that handled the ice today.

Gear Slot	The Item	The Role	The Hardcore Critique
HEAD	The North Face Mountain Beanie	The Thermostat	PRO: The only “Tier 1” name-brand gear I own. Kept the heat in without baking my head.
HANDS	Kohl’s 3M Thinsulate Gloves	The MVP	PRO: Essential for handling wet chunks of ice. They stayed warm even when grabbing slush.
TORSO (Shell)	Target Goodfellow Sherpa Hoodie	The Wind Break	PRO: 100% Recycled Polyester. The sherpa lining traps air but breathes enough for high-exertion work.
TORSO (Mid)	Old Navy Fleece (Q4/2000)	The Legend	PRO: “Old Old Navy.” A relic from the Clinton Administration. It provides the critical insulation layer.
TORSO (Base)	Under Armour ColdGear + Hanes Tee	The Engine	PRO: The ColdGear prevented the “flash freeze.” It pulled the sweat off my skin while I was chopping away at the ice.
LEGS	Faded Glory Jeans + Sweats	The Armor	PRO: Thick denim protects your legs when chunks of ice fly back at you. CON: Cotton kills—don’t kneel in the snow.
FEET	Skechers Sergeant “Verdict” Boots	The Anchors	PRO: Style 4442. Waterproof and built like a tank. NOTE: These might not actually be steel toe (despite feeling like it), which actually kept my toes warmer.
SOCKS	Walmart Hunting Socks (c. 2014)	The Firewall	PRO: The cushion protected my feet from the impact of kicking the shovel.

The MVP: Kohl’s 3M Thinsulate Gloves

I grabbed these gloves from Kohl’s back in 2019. They aren’t fancy Gore-Tex mountaineering gauntlets. They are $15 fleece gloves. But when you are handling melting ice, they are monsters.

The tag reveals the secret: a 57% Olefin / 43% Polyester interlining.

Olefin is a miracle fiber for slush because it is hydrophobic—it hates water. While cotton absorbs moisture, Olefin repels it. My hands were wet on the outside from the melting ice, but inside, they were dry and warm. I shoveled for hours without hand warmers, and my fingers never even tingled.

The Legend: “Old Old Navy” (Est. Q4 2000)

We need to take a moment to respect the elders. Buried in the middle of my layers was a 1/4-zip fleece from Old Navy.

I checked the tag. It reads Q4/00.

That means this shirt was manufactured in the Fourth Quarter of the year 2000.

This piece of polyester is older than the iPod. It is older than Wikipedia. It was sitting on a rack in a strip mall before 9/11 happened. It is legitimately “Old Old Navy.”

It looks beige now, but it started its life as white. That color change isn’t dirt; it’s a “vintage patina” earned through hundreds of wash cycles over twenty-six years. And today, it did exactly what it was built to do: It breathed. Because I was chopping ice in the afternoon sun, I was working up a sweat. A heavy coat would have suffocated me. This vintage fleece allowed the heat to escape while keeping the cold air out. It is the thermal bridge that held the whole system together.

The Final Clean Up

Cleanup days like this—where you are chopping ice and sweating in the sun—are usually miserable because you can’t find the right temperature balance. You are either freezing or overheating.

But this disaster of an outfit worked.

The Skechers “Verdict” boots took the beating of the ice. The Under Armour managed the sweat. The hydrophobic gloves handled the slush. And the 25-year-old fleece proved that they literally don’t make them like they used to.

You don’t need a $1,000 “system.” You just need gear that works, and apparently, you need to keep it in your closet until it changes color.