good and cheap goggles: spy targa 3

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In my continuing complain-a-thon about the cost of snowsports, here’s another way to save some cash: goggles. First off, you need goggles (as opposed to sun glasses or (shudder) nothing):

  • Goggles keep blowing and otherwise airborne snow out of your eyes.
  • Goggles generally have 100% UVA/B protection to keep the sun from bouncing around off the snow and up into your eyes.
  • It’s windy, whether just from the environment or because you’re hauling ass down a mountain.
  • When you crash, you want to keep snow/ice/stuff from hitting you in the eyes. More than just keeping the sun from your eyes goggles offer physical protection.
  • You will get hit in the face with poles, boards, and other hard objections.
  • Goggles tend to come in low-light and bright-light options for super sunny (bluebird) days or cloudy dark days.

You can easily drop $200 for a set of nice Oakley goggles and they are certainly great shades, no doubt about that. Worse, you can not buy anything on your first day and need to pay through the nose at the resort. Instead I offer up what I’m wearing: the Spy Targa 3‘s, which can be had for about $25.

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$60 later, I have three pairs of good-enough shades.

I have a pair of bronze lessons for full light riding, and a rasta-banded set of persimmons for lower light. The problem with wearing the wrong lenses are pretty straightforward: wear low light lenses on a bright day and you’ll be squinting all the time. Wear darker lenses on cloudy days and you won’t be able to make out curves and contours in the snow.

You might have spotted some clear Bolle Mojo‘s tucked in there with the Spy’s. Clear goggles are absolute shit for snow sports: not enough contrast in low light and in sunny conditions you’ll be squinting the whole time. But they’re good for pushing the snow blower around the driveway or other at-home tasks where snow is blowing around.

So if you’re new to the sport and want to be cheap, I’d recommend going with low-light goggles. You’ll be squinting a bit when you look up in the sky but most of the time you’ll be looking down. And if I have to pick between squinting and not seeing all the contrasts in the snow, I’ll take the squint.