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How to mitigate glare and bright light when skiing?

I just went skiing for the first time in years, and the bright light and glare off of the snow gave me one of the worst migraines I've had in a long time. I want to continue to ski now that my kids are old enough to enjoy it, and would love suggestions to help mitigate the effects of the brightness. I wore dark glasses and a baseball cap today, but that obviously wasn't enough. Thank you!

  1. I don't completely have an answer for you Kpandes. What I do know is that certain tinted lenses help for certain things. I wonder if you wore sunglasses with another tint if that would help. It was suggested to me that rose coloured lenses help migraines. My two cents.

    Hope the migraine has gone away

    1. I took my family skiing awhile ago and I was also concerned about the same thing. Especially since I knew I would be stressed, dealing with kids on slopes. I looked for ski googles with a high UV rating, like the highest I could find. They make ski googles in a wide range of UV rating. I picked a pair that eliminated the most glare. I was also blessed that when we ended up going it was an overcast day, but I still wore my googles. Googles were also great since it blocked out all light, even on the sides of the face.

      I have an astigmatism, so my eyes have a hard time focusing without my prescription eye glasses. So I made sure the glasses could be worn underneath my googles.

      If you plan to go a lot, I would invest in a pair of googles that have good reviews for eliminating the most glare from the snow and sun. These might cost more, but I believe would be worth it. I didn't have to splurge on my families googles and they were fine. But I knew the glare would do me in within an hour if I wasn't careful.

      I also made sure to keep my abortive medications on me while on the slopes and because I was also fearful of altitude sickness bringing on a migraine, I began taking precautions to combat that days in advance. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate. Basically, while having fun, I made sure to plan in advance and stop and take care of myself - and also other members of the family since they could just as easily get altitude sickness too.

      1. I have a good preventative prescription medicine protocol, but sunlight and glare can still trigger a migraine. I also ski a lot. For strong light days I recommend dark polarized googles. The googles block light that enters from the sides. For me I avoid skiing in flat light—particularly near-white out visibility. I find that the mental strain experienced when discerning white terrain features in thick white fog or heavy snow is also a reliable migraine trigger.

        On overcast days I ski with light, brown-tint, polarized sunglasses or googles. I see terrain best with such optics. My thought is that you want to see the useful light and cut out the useless scatter and glare. BTW, I always ski with a pack (as much to carry stuff for family), and I always carry additional googles/glasses so that I can adapt to changing conditions.

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