CELL PHONE: Best lightweight rain gear

Thursday 12 July 2012

Best lightweight rain gear

A rain jacket is for most backcountry travelers an inevitability. There are certainly areas of the world where precipitation is unlikely enough to render raingear useless weight, and places either warm or cold enough that precipitation is not a concern. In very warm climates one can just get wet without suffering ill effects, and in very cold places the certainty of precipitation falling in the form of snow combines with the limits of current WPB (waterproof-breathable) technology to make other shells better choices. Most backcountry areas don't fit into any of these categories, or only do so in certain seasons, and thus anyone hoping to experience the backcountry in safety and comfort ought to bring something to keep liquid precipitation off their backs and out of their ears. The reasons for this become a lifetime axiom for anyone caught out in a rainstorm without raingear. Water promotes heat loss with impressive efficiency, and renders almost all insulations drastically less effective. The necessity of raingear is a lesson best learned in theory first, rather than the potentially hazardous school of hard knocks.