Marmot Minimalist Jacket - Men's - 2007 BCS

I'm not sure if the zipper "problem" was fixed or what, but I've had zero issues with the zipper. It works just like every other zipper I've used. Zip up, zip down, no catching.
Jacket is very light and packable. With that come the price of limited durability though. It should be fine unless you're doing some serious bushwacking. Pit zips are huge and the pockets are well placed for wearing with a backpack. Other than that there aren't too many bells and whistles with this jacket. Note: The color "autumn" is more of a pumpkin orange than yellow as shown in the pictures.

Seems like a great jacket, but the zipper is not a "two-way" slider-- it only opens from the top, not the bottom.
And for heat control, I like to open it from the bottom.

I realize the recommended use for this jacket is alpine but I thought it just might be okay for Australian bush conditions.
In a word it isn't.
I took it out for the first time this weekend and it was a total failure.
Gore-Tex Paclite is definitely not designed to cope on closed in Australian bush tracks where the jacket constantly brushes against the brush.
There was only light rain falling and very little exertion, so the perspiration factor was next to nil.
Yet, after two hours my jacket was entirely wet inside and because the temperatures were 4-6 degrees celsius cold became a factor.
And on top of that when I tried to pull one of the hood cords it snapped.
So my impressions of this jacket are "an expensive dog."
Oh well, you live and learn.

Just a follow up to the last review. After checking out many other Packlite, packable rain shells, I determined the Marmot minimalist to be the lightest vs features on the market. In Marmot's defense, they sewed in a zipper stiffener and the jacket works great! If you want this jacket, that is probably what you will have to do.

Seems like a great jacket, Pack-Lite and all but the zipper got caught on the storm flap on the first and each subsequent actuation. The zipper was also hard to get started as the starter tooth is buried in stiff material. I really wanted to love this piece, but sent it back thanks to this site’s excellent customer service. One would think Marmot knows how to engineer a zipper/ storm flap interface by now... guess not! Don't buy this product unless you have scissors handy to get out of it!