was looking for an insulated jacket that i could belay and climb in. when It came I was concerned with the size. I'm a standard medium in arcteryx. I'm 5'8" and weigh 176 lbs. the jacket at first felt a little tight across the back. I really thought about sending it back.Decided to take it with me to Ouray for a little Ice climbing. last weekend weather was low 20's and snowing off and on. jacket was perfect between burns in the ice park. it actually fit over my gamma mx hooded jacket. I didn't even pull out my down belay jacket out. no need to. If I had to do it over again I would go one size up. if you have any shoulder girth the jacket is going to feel snug. Oh, the hood fits great over a helmet. definitely an athletic cut.

so I've owned this boot since october, took the boot out two times to vail to climb in it and one of the plastic clasps that cinches your heel back in the boot broke. it was plastic failure. the following day I called lowa to get an RA # to return the boot and have it fixed. this was on the 12th of november. I gave them a little more than a week to call me and to no avail, so I picked up the phone and called them. at first they had a challenge finding my boot. when they finally found the boot out in the warehouse no one had even looked at it. they had to call me back. so I recieved a phone call from lowa and they told me that they had to send it to there cobbler to have the boot repaired. I asked for an eta of when i would get the boot back? she had answer because their cobbler is on the west coast in washington and lowa resides on the east coast. I told her the ice was getting ready to come in and was their an alternative. she said this is all they could do. today the boots showed up on my porch december 11th. almost a month to repair the boots. if the boot was broken because of abuse I would have no problem waiting, but when it is manufacturing issue they should have replaced it with new boots. Be leary of buying lowa boots. the weak link on this boot is the plastic buckle that cinches your heel back.

what an amazing fruit boot! went up to vail and did some drytooling in the belfry and christened the boots on a route called svengali m9. the first time up the route it definitely took some getting use to. I own the new rambo 4's and they have a spur on them, but the rambo's spur is nothing compared to the raptors spur. I own lowa's mountain gtx boot in a size 10, so I ordered this boot in a size ten. the boot was way to small. I had to order up a 10.5 and that was the money baby! I know the rage now is to go bareback, but it is so cool hanging from your heel and being comfortable. Can't wait to get these boots on again. I did have to down size the sock. went from smartwool mountaineers sock to smartwool hiker.