Jacket Fails! What I Wish I Knew About Insulation Jackets as a Hiking and Climbing Beginner
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If you haven’t noticed by now, one of the things we are hoping to accomplish with our blog and You Tube Channel is removing some of the barriers and passive-aggressive, gate-keeping perspectives that play a real role in stopping people from enjoying Great Nature.
Unfortunately, though, one of those barriers can’t be solved only with knowhow or attitude. Sometimes, it really does come down to having the right gear. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t cost-effective ways to get that “right gear,” but some stuff is just mandatory. You can’t have spring, fall, and winter experiences without adequate clothing, for instance. And that need for the right gear can be a real barrier for people. We don’t all have money to burn.
And while I can’t magically reduce the cost of outdoor gear, maybe I can help by making regretful purchases something that happens less often.
That was my mindset when I made this video. I have spent a lot of money on jackets over my many years of doing this stuff, and only some of those jackets do the things I need them to do for me based on the activities I pursue in the mountains. That isn’t to say that my “other jackets” don’t insulate and keep me warm. Sure, they do. But I have come to find that I have newer jackets and tend to gravitate towards the same jackets time and time again. So, did I ever really need those “other jackets” from the past? How much money would I have saved if I could have just skipped straight to the jackets that have the design features I need, now that I’ve gotten more advanced at this stuff.
And more advanced climbing doesn’t necessarily mean that I need top-of-the-line gear. I’m not talking about spending inordinately more money on only the “very best” equipment. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever bought a new jacket because of some new space-age material that is just so much better than the other materials out there. No, it’s been my slow recognition that I need simple design features about the hoods and pockets and back and such.
So, while some of the “new jackets,” the ones that do what I need them to do, could be more expensive than the old jackets they replaced, they are nowhere near so expensive as to eclipse the amount of money I would have saved had I just bought a jacket with these features in the first place; instead, I spent the money on two or three jackets, all supposedly to serve the same purpose, as I refined and figured out what I needed.
Learn from my mistakes, then, free of charge! Think about what you might be into next year and the year after that. You might find that it’s not just your knowledge that you need to upgrade, but a bit of clothing, too. There are no shortcuts to the knowledge; but you can take a shortcut right to the clothing that will serve you today, tomorrow, and beyond.
And as far as the insulating layer jackets you saw in the video that have those features I covet, here they are in order from less to more warm: