I am looking for a down jacket to keep me warm at the campsite on winter backpacking trips in the western NC mountains. I can get this jacket or a North Face Elysium jacket for almost identical prices. Which do I select and why? Also, I am 5'7", 155 lbs and think the medium in each jacket would be the proper fit. Am I correct? Thanks in advance.

I would personally choose the Mtn Hardwear. The Phantom uses 800 fill down while TNF uses 700 fill. Bottom line on that is the Phantom is a warmer jacket that weighs about the same as TNF. TNF Elysium is not water resistant. The Phantom is not DWR but it can handle a bit of rain. The Phantom has two handwarmer (meaning soft feeling) pockets, a chest pocket and an internal pocket. The Elysium has two pockets where you can warm your hands but TNF jacket doesn't provide you with the extra comfort a more elegantly designed handwarmer does. TNF also lacks the internal pocket. The difference in the quality of the down is a major factor. The other major factor that leaps out at me is the difference in the fabrics used in each jacket. TNF uses a 100% nylon fabric. The Phantom uses a 15 denier ripstop nylon. Denier is the unit used to measure the strength of a fabric. (There is a formula for measuring denier -- 1 denier = 1 gram of mass per 9000 meters.) Anyway, the higher the denier, the stronger the fabric. Ripstop nylon is also stronger than simple nylon. Those little squares you see on a ripstop jacket are produced by first inter-weaving the threads and then diagonially over-weaving them to make a crosshatch pattern. This process stops or limits rips and tears. In theory -- I've never managed to tear any type of nylon. I think a med would fit you, but check your chest and waist measurements before you decide. You might want to consider one other factor which neither of these two jackets address: rain, wet snow, sleet. I live in the foothills of the Appalachians. In theory, drought has dominated the weather for the last 4 years. But every single time I hit the trail, it rains. Or snows. Or sleets. I took the cheap way out and found an used Patagonia gore anorak. It only weighs a couple of ozs and does double duty as the threshold for my tent. I hope all my yadda, yadda, helped a wee bit.