Aurora Heat Review

Technology is great. Love the little computer that fits in my pocket. Big fan of antibiotics and vaccines. But sometimes, we humans, in our quest for bigger, better, newer and more complex goodies, forget that nature does a lot of things better.

This is where Aurora Heat comes in.

There are a lot of hand and foot warming products on the market. There are the single-use heat packets that magically generate heat for a fixed amount of time until you chuck them out. There are battery-powered boot warmers that last 2–13 hours and eventually need to be replaced.

But then there is the majestic beaver. Beavers don’t keep warm thanks to batteries. They keep warm despite swimming in glacial waters because of their low-tech, high-efficiency, 10,000-fur-filaments-per-square-inch underfur.

And unlike battery-operated or chemical-reaction-based options, Aurora Heat beaver fur warmers are, by their very nature, biodegradable, sustainable and extremely long lasting.

My Aurora Heat Review: Do Aurora Heat warmers work?

I have had the chance to test drive Aurora Heat’s wrist warmers. The fur is worn against the skin and is highly effective at retaining  your body heat providing warmth to your hands as the blood circulates all around, even up to your fingertips.

I have been more than impressed with my wrist warmers as the cold weather has finally hit Calgary. While they don’t replace the use of gloves or mittens outdoors, indoors they keep my oft-chilly hands warm and comfortable while I type or knit. In fact, if I am wearing them and start doing anything that requires a bit more energy output (such as getting the kids ready to leave for school), I have to pull them off because I break a sweat. Outdoors, I can spend more time without my gloves on, doing the things that really need to be accomplished with bare fingers, such as installing car seats and buckling kids in, harvesting my bean pods after a big snowfall or adjusting (and readjusting) my kids’ winter accessories.

I conducted an unintentional experiment with my wrist warmers while working at my computer. I had forgotten to replace the one on my right hand after removing it, and after some time I noticed I had one icy cold hand and one comfortable hand. (Guess which one was which!) Magic!

I recently put them to the test during my Momcation in downtown Calgary. Like a total amateur, I did not check the weather forecast for the weekend so did not realize that it would be -14 C. I went on a thrift-shopping spree but to get there had to spend a long time waiting for the C-Train. I didn’t pack gloves, but I had my wrist warmers. I was very surprised that, despite the cold, I could easily use my touchscreen to edit some videos while waiting for the train. On the way back, I couldn’t shove my hands in my pockets when they got cold because they were laden with bags. And my hands survived! They were cold, but they didn’t hurt. I didn’t need to stop to warm them up in my pockets or armpits; instead I comfortably held my bags all the way back to the hotel!

When used in conjunction with mitts or gloves, the difference is obvious. My hands and fingers are comfortable for longer. And when my hands do get painfully cold, like after digging a dropped toy out of eight inches of snow with my bare hands, the recovery time to re-warm my fingers is faster.

Dam it, what works for mama beavers works for me.

The other Aurora Heat products we have are their kids’ hand and foot warmers. They work the same way as their adult counterparts; they’re just smaller.

Aurora Heat hand and foot warmers are circles (for children) and rectangles (for adults) of fur used with your usual mittens or gloves. The fur is folded over your fingertips or placed in the palm. (Some parents like to stitch the fur directly into the mitt or glove to avoid their children losing them.)

For the feet, they can be folded over the toes before sliding the foot into a sock or worn on the sole. Just like the wrist warmers, the hand and foot warmers retain heat in the hands and feet, even when kids are digging deep in the snow. The heat lasts, and the fur lasts.

My daughter loves the softness of the beaver fur and even finds it quite soothing just to rub her hands over it when she’s feeling anxious.

Because of how often mitts and gloves don’t make it home from school, I only want to use the warmers when she’s playing outside with me, as it would be a devastating loss if our Aurora Heat warmers fell into the abyss that is the school lost and found!

Because I never keep my own gloves on for more than a few minutes, as I always need naked fingers to re-zip coats or re-tuck boots under snow pants cuffs or take pictures with my phone, my Aurora Heat product of choice is the wrist warmers. (And I may need to treat myself to the ankle warmers next.) I love how they feel on my body—they’ve become a daily accessory that I feel lost without when I leave them behind.

Aurora Heat also recommends its products for folks with conditions such as Raynaud’s. I suffered from this as a child and teen and remember my fingers going completely numb and turning ghost white, and this was not even in particularly cold weather. Although I no longer experience this (for reasons unknown!), I can absolutely see how Aurora Heat warmers could alleviate these symptoms.

While I am not a skier or snowboarder, I would also expect that Aurora Heat foot warmers would be ideal in ski or snowboard boots and be a great alternative to battery-powered socks.

Beaver fur? Really?

Not everyone is comfortable using animal products. In fact, I was a vegetarian and refused to use leather products for many years.

Over time, I have come to understand the importance of sustainability with regards to what we consume and what we wear. There is a significant ethical and ecological difference between imported, factory-farmed cattle, and local, pasture-raised hamburger. Likewise, there’s a huge difference between animal fibres such as wool, leather and fur versus their synthetic counterparts. Animal fibres are biodegradable but they’re also super durable. Why do you think archeologists can recover leather and fur goods from centuries past that are still functional? Carefully choosing certain goods made of animal fibres is the environmentally responsible alternative to choosing plastic-based, single- or finite-use products that will still be here centuries from now for archeologists to recover from our landfills and … put back in the landfill while they judge us for how many cheap plastic products we threw away.

The beavers harvested by the Indigenous hunters to use in Aurora Heat’s products are all wild caught. Hunting plays an important role in maintaining population balance, and the entire beaver is respectfully and sustainably used. Beaver fur is a renewable resource that lasts decades. I am a big believer in hunting as a means of obtaining food and raw materials when it is done ethically: the entire animal is used, only animals whose population allows it are harvested and land rights are respected. And this is exactly what Aurora Heat does.

Another aspect of sustainability is the human cost. We all know, but often try to forget, that low-priced, disposable products are typically manufactured by low-paid people who are considered disposable. Aurora Heat employs Indigenous women in the Northwest Territories and provides them with healthy and flexible working conditions, especially important as many of them are mothers. It is also of import that Aurora Heat offers generous compensation to the social media partners promoting their products. Far too often the work that I do to bring a brand to your attention is undervalued by the companies that approach me.

Aurora Heat products are not cheap, but the price reflects the value of the fur and the fair compensation of the trapper, the value of the sewists who make the products and the value of a company that is committed to giving back to Northern communities with On-the-Land initiatives.

I am so glad that the team at Aurora Heat reached out to introduce me to their products so that I could in turn present them to you.

I am confident Aurora Heat products will warm both your body and your soul as they have mine.

If you’re looking to try Aurora Heat this winter, save 15% using MAMANLOUPSDEN at checkout during their Black Friday promo all of November! This is the biggest discount available at any time for Aurora Heat.