Spring Skiing Tips: Protect Your Face, Lips and Eyes from Sunburn

spring skiing st anton am albert — **The sun is high. The snow is blinding white. It pays to be sun safe when spring skiing.**

Spring skiing! We love it until we get sunburned. Be sun smart and sun safe!

Three Sun Safe Spring Skiing Tips

Block the Sunburn

While the risk of sunburn is somewhat reduced at lower altitudes, anytime the sun is shining and snow is reflecting, you are at risk for sunburn.

Sunscreens come in two basic flavors – physical and chemical. Physical block sunscreens use minerals, like titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, to actively block UV rays from the sun by bouncing them away from your face and body.

Chemical sunscreens use carbon-based compounds, like oxybenzone, octinoxate, octisalate and avobenzone, to convert UV rays into heat which is harmlessly released from the skin.

Both physical and chemical sunscreens will protect your skin and prevent sunburn while skiing.

Which is best? That’s a personal decision. However, my skin cancer doctor swears by physical sun blocks. So that’s what we generally use.

Right now, my favorites are SuperGoop Mineral Sunscreen 40 SPF and Elta MD’s various mineral based facial and sport sunscreens. For a less expensive option, check out CeraVe SPF 50.

Best Tip: When shopping for physical sunblock, look for words like microfine and transparent, and aim for at least SPF 30. Don’t forget to reapply!

sun safe spring skiing — Keep your face, lips and eyes happy and healthy while spring skiing!

Love Your Lips

Last month, skiing several days in a row, I sunburned my lips, a totally rookie mistake. (For more skiing rookie mistakes, clicker here.)

I was using the wrong lip balm, one that moisturized, but did not contain any SPF.

Because lip skin is thin, and contains almost no melanin (which helps prevent sunburn), lips are at high risk for skin cancer.

As with sunscreen, aim for SPF 25 when buying lip balm (25 seems to be the more common sun protection factor). In the spirit of better late than never, I’m using Supergoop Mintfusion Lip Balm with Shea Butter. Any SPF chapstick type balm will work however.

We’ve found that most SPF lip balms use chemical blockers. There are some zinc and titanium dioxide lip balms available, but they are thicker, don’t go on as smoothly and sometimes leave a white residue on our lips.

For lip repair, I like Bag Balm Moisturizer in a small lip-friendly tube. But be aware! Bag Balm does not have any SPF. It’s only good for soothing the damage when the lip damage is done.

Best Tip: Carry a couple of tubes of SPF 25 lip balm everywhere you go (in case you lose one) and reapply!

Protect Your Eyes

I recently learned that eyelids are one of the most common areas for skin cancer. Yep, eyelids.

Which makes sense, because no one wants to put sunscreen anywhere near their eyes.

This makes sunglasses or goggles mandatory on sunny ski days.

Even if you always wear goggles (like me!), it’s smart to carry sunglasses on spring days for you and your kids. Why? For eating lunch outside, listening to music on a sunny deck or having some outdoor après fun. (For recent snowboard and ski goggle reviews, click here)

The best sunglasses for skiing use chemicals in the lenses to boost UV absorption to between 99% and 100%. You may also find glasses that say “UV absorption up to 400nm.” This is the same as 100% UV absorption.

Best Tip: Polarization has nothing to do with UV absorption, although it does cut glare. If you buy polarized lenses, make sure they’ve been treated for maximum UV absorption.