Climate warming is causing asynchronies between animal phenology and environments. Mismatched traits, like coat colour change mismatched with snow, typically decrease survival. However, coat change does not serve a singular adaptive benefit of camouflage, and alternate coat change functions may confer advantages that supersede mismatch costs. We found that mismatch reduced autumn mortality risk of snowshoe hares in the Yukon by 86.5 %. We suggest that the increased coat insulation and lower metabolic rates of winter acclimatized hares confer energetic advantages to white mismatched hares that reduce their risk of dying. We found that white mismatched hares forage 17-77 minutes less per day than matched brown hares between 0 and -10 ºC, thus lowering their predation risk and increasing survival. We found no effect of mismatch on spring mortality risk, where mismatch occurred at warmer temperatures, suggesting a potential temperature limit where the costs of conspicuousness outweigh energetic benefits.