The Gallatin Valley Trail Crew completed its fall maintenance pass on Sourdough Trail Tuesday and reported the usual seasonal inventory. Nineteen single gloves. Zero pairs. The count includes five liners, four leather work gloves, three ski mittens, two nitrile mechanics gloves, and one mitten that appeared to be hand-knitted from what crew lead Marv Haskins described as “possibly yak hair, possibly something else entirely.”

“We find them in the same spots every year,” Haskins said, speaking over the whine of a brush cutter near the third switchback. “Left side of the trail going up. Right side coming down. Like clockwork. Never a match.”

The phenomenon has spawned several local theories. Retired surveyor Dale Pritchett, 72, maintains a spreadsheet tracking glove recoveries dating to 2003. His data suggests a 94% correlation between single-glove losses and the weeknight social run group that meets at the Bozeman Running Company parking lot. “They shed layers like snakes,” Pritchett said. “One hand gets warm. Off comes the glove. Into the sagebrush. The other hand stays cold. Mystery solved.”

Others disagree. MSU graduate student Kelsey Vandeberg, who studies recreation ecology, believes the gloves are deliberate trail markers. “People leave them as breadcrumbs,” she said. “They plan to retrieve them on the descent. Then they take a different route down. Or they forget. Or they move to Portland.”

The crew collected all nineteen gloves and deposited them at the trailhead kiosk alongside the usual accumulation of water bottles, trekking pole tips, and a single hiking boot that has reappeared each October since 2019. No one has claimed a glove in recorded memory. Marv Haskins loaded the yak-hair mitten into his pack. Said his wife could probably match it with something in the hall closet.

Winter arrives one lost layer at a time.