Great jacket...with limitations

By Chad Poindexter Ranked #45 - Men's Technical Shells January 1, 2012

Bottom line, this really is a great jacket. It keeps me dry, fits me good and does not feel clammy on the inside (even next to skin) when I know I am sweating. The inner lining does a great job at absorbing the moisture and from what I can tell, does a decent job at pushing that moisture right on out. It was pretty amazing when I took this thing off and saw how wet it really was inside, but never once could tell it while wearing it. Then, just open it up and lay it out and it will dry out in no time flat.

The outer shell does a great job at repelling water, but I did notice that the jacket would wet out pretty quickly around the places that have been bonded, such as around the pockets. However, this never proved to be anything worth worrying about. Other than this, a quick shake and you would never know that the jacket had been worn for hours in the rain.

But, a few hang ups...

Namely the lack of hand pockets. My opinion, this is not a light weight jacket, not even close. My large weighs in at 15.9 oz. Saying this, my XL GoLite Tumalo weighs in at 10.8 oz and does feature hand pockets, although no chest pockets. But, there are easily jackets out there that weigh as little as 7 - 9 oz with features, and to make matters worse, I recently had my hands on a ZPacks cuben fiber rain jacket that was 3 oz, with pit zips (no hand pockets).

Anyway, said all that just to say that I don't think that there is a good reason that hand pockets were left off of this jacket considering the weight. At least swap the chest pockets out for hand pockets...

Now I am not going to be hiking with my hands in those pockets, but what about while I am at camp, it's cold and wet and I want to (naturally) put my hands in my pocket. In this case I will have to either stuff my hands in my pants pockets (which means I would probably have to remove gloves) or shed that jacket and lose a bit of warmth.

I know that I spent a good deal of time talking about pockets, but still in all, like I said, this is a great jacket. If you can do without pockets, and don't mind dropping the dough, this jacket should be considered.

View Details: Columbia Peak 2 Peak Jacket - Men's

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