Climb On! (product review)

"Behold the hands, how they promise, conjure, appeal, menace, pray, supplicate, refuse, beckon, interrogate, admire, confess, cringe, instruct, command, mock and what not besides, with a variation and multiplication of variation which makes the tongue envious."
~Michel de Montaigne

Hands are useful things. 

And I use mine for so many things that I love. I climb with them. I make my living as an artist and graphic designer with them. I hold my daughters' hands in my hands. I build and create with them. I knead bread with them. I communicate with them, through gesture and typing and script. They are essential. They are a requisite, an imperative to my life. 

But despite - or perhaps because of - the necessitous of my hands, I abuse them. I am not gentle with my hands. And when you take the aggregate of abuse I inflict upon my hands it is no small miracle that they still function as well as they do.

Added to the physical abuse I inflict my poor hands I am constantly washing them, what with baking and cooking and building things. I scrub them and soap them up in hot water.

My hands really say a lot about me, and I don't mind the many scars and callouses that decorate them, but I do like to keep them in the best shape that I can. In addition to the hard playing I do, banging them, scraping them, bruising them, they are as equally important in holding my baby daughter, braiding the hair of my eight year-old, holding my wife's hand.

This is a tough situation to be in when you hate - HATE - lotion. Lotions are pretty gross. They mostly feel slimy and slippery and gooey. Kind of like a toad has licked you. And I promise you you don't want to try climbing with a coating of toad spittle on your hands. (Please note that I do not actually know what toad spittle feels like; this is just a broad supposition on my part for the sake of literary illustration.)

Enter Climb On! Originally made for climbers (Yay Climbing!), this is a great skin care product for anyone who has, well, skin. Seriously. This stuff is fantastic! The emulsifier (the stuff that holds all the other stuff together) is Cera alba (also known as yellow beeswax). And what that beeswax holds together is pretty amazing: Prunus armeniaca (apricot kernel oil), Vitis vinifera (grapeseed oil), Triticum vulgare (wheatgerm oil), essential ois of Citrus vulgaris (neroli), Lavendula angustifolia (lavender), Citrus limon (lemon), tocopherl (vitamin E). It's all the stuff your skin needs to be happy.

Don't believe me that this is all good stuff? According to the folks at Climb On! all the ingredients are chemical free and food grade. Yep, you can eat this stuff. And because I believe in thoroughness, I tried it. Just remember that just because you can eat something doesn't mean you should. It's kind of gross to eat. But safe!

Because I climb a lot, I use it a lot. And it works great. It really soothes and softens without the greasiness or sliminess of other lotions I've tried. One of the great things about Climb On! is that I can use it and still climb. It absorbs that well.

And Climb On! isn't just great for my hands. I use it on my feet, which also take a huge amount of abuse being shoved into tiny climbing shoes and made to run mile after mile in Fivefingers, to give my wife foot massages, on the many abrasions I get on my arms and legs while climbing, on my baby daughter's diaper rash (Thanks for that tip, @climbonproducts!), and on the skin around my eight year-old's nose when it gets chapped in the cold weather.

The scent is pleasant and not overwhelming. It smells clean and fresh.

I highly recommend Climb On! If you have skin, give it a try. 

Climb On! has a whole range of natural care products. Give them a visit at climbonproducts.com and follow them on Twitter at @climbonproducts.