Kim & Phillipa’s Blog

On the weekend Phillipa and I set out to buy our wet climate jackets for our adventure around Europe. After talking to other travelers the words “Freezing” and “F#$%@ cold” came up a lot which brought back some fond memories of New York.

Phillipa and I experienced extremely cold weather in NY (wind chill of -30) the parkers we got (Mountain Design) didn’t do as well as we had hoped. The parkers were warm enough for most of the trip but when the constant rain fell we found that our jackets were starting to get heavy and very wet. We found that drying the jackets took too long and we may not have the luxury of waiting this time round.

There are a number of articles stating how important it is to have Gore-Tex clothing for very cold and very wet areas. Add the word Gore-Tex to any clothing and expect the price to double or triple.

So is it worth buying Gore-Tex clothing?

What is Gore-Tex?

“Thin, lightweight membrane mounted between the face fabric and the lining. It is Waterproof, Windproof and Breathable. This membrane has nine billion microscopic pores per square inch. These pores are much smaller than a droplet of liquid water, but much larger than a molecule of water vapor. Water in a liquid form cannot penetrate the membrane, but both moisture vapor from perspiration and heat can easily escape. ” www.motoport.com/dictionary.htm

Well I can’t give you my advice cause I haven’t had a chance to test the jackets out, being summer and all but from what I have heard yes it is worth it.

Note: I did try and wet the sleeve of the jacket to see if it is really water proof (the material didn’t look like a normal waterproof material as it didn’t have that shiny look). To my amazement it was like water off a newly waxed car.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 22nd, 2007 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.