synthetic material of choice for jacket with frequent stuffing/unstuffing

Mike, If it just for hunting season you might be better off with a a Rab Xenon or an Arteryx Nuclei, you would get many seasons use before they start to degrade. Also jackets like them don't need to be stuffed very tight. You could either for less than 150$

I think the degree of compression is the important thing. If you have the room, loosely packing your insulated gear in a trash compactor bag and allowing your other gear and pack compression straps to mash it down a bit is the way to go. Using a small pack is always a challenge and brings the temptation to compress lofted items to black-hole-event-horizon levels. That's the thing that kills insulation and should be avoided if possible. IMHO, colder weather calls for larger packs and inevitable weight increase.

Dale-you're spot on of course; I love to hunt w/ my old Dana Gallatin lumbar pack- but it does force some tight compressions to get everything to fit- might have to reserve it for bluebird day hunts and use one of my larger packs for other weather Mike

Stephen, http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/mb_post_form.html?po=edit&note_id=858914&forum_thread_id=101420

well I’m on the hunt again for a Apex jacket- have emails into Tilak (Czk) and another into an outfit called Cumulus (Poland)- both are 67 gram Apex, both have hoods, both pretty light at 10-12 oz

not sure if anyone stateside has started making jackets in Apex

Mike,

you should then definitely also contact As Tucas (Spain). Marco already plans to launch an Apex-jacket and normally he also can do custonisationwork.

do you have his contact info by chance?

thanks

.Marco A. Sanchez  who started As Tucas has been a member of BPL for over 6 years

Danke :)

I did a similar search a while back for Climashield jackets. I believe the Snugpak gear is made with Climashield (or something similar). Easy enough to browse their UK website and order something from eBay. Wiggy’s also sells a liner jacket and vest, both are made in the USA.

Snugpak uses staple fiber insulation and not Climashield.

Wiggy’s indeed do uses Climashield, but not Apex.

I ended ordering a jacket from Cumulus; they take the VAT off the price so it ended up being pretty reasonable even with shipping

hoo, that thing is crazy looking!

I hope crazy warm for the weight :)

Looks like 2.1oz Apex, that’s normally a 50f rating for a quilt.

should be pretty close to what I’m looking for; clo value is very close to other syns (Primaloft, etc)- we’ll see :)

Best of luck with it Mike :-)

I really like Polartec Alpha. Great warmth, compresses small, and breathability is very good.

Then there is Primaloft iterations obviously, which I generally feel warmer in compared to down.

I like Alpha too, have a hooded Strata, but was looking for something lighter. I found a Marmot Isotherm that was lighter (60 gram/m I believe), but the lack of a hood makes it less desirable. I’m not aware of anyone making a 60/ish gram Alpha hoodie????

I’m done with Primaloft for now, my jackets get packed a lot and it simply loses too much loft.  When new, it’s the king of syns for warmth/weight, but that goes away

I was curious about The North Face’s Thermoball insulation made by Primaloft. A local mountaineering store had the mother of all liquidation sales in May, so I picked a jacket up for 25% of retail cost. This synthetic insulation is unique. Instead of being cut staple, or continuous fibers like Polargard Delta, it is a whole bunch of little hollow balls about 2 mm in diameter. TNF claims that it’s very compressible, as the balls are pretty tough and supposedly nearly impossible to crush. The jacket (and also the hoody model) of course have to be quilted to keep the balls in place, so I don’t know how warm and “windproof” it will be. It will be interesting to see how warm this jacket will be come next fall.

Gary I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on the thermal ball; definitely an interesting concept, doesn’t seem to have caught on yet, maybe it will???

Mike,

Did you see where Richard Nisley recently stated that Montbell’s exceloft is a continuous fiber and therefore more resistant to degradation?

The Thermo ball stuff looks interesting. Not too sure about the sewn through parts though.

I’ll try to remember to post my impression of the Thermoball jacket once the temperatures drop below freezing next fall. The only time I’ve worn it in the field was while truck camping in late May. I think it only got down to around +40* F, but man, was I toasty while wearing it. I’ve read where it works even better while you are exerting a bit. I guess it sort of traps the body’s heat somehow, I don’t know. It also is supposed to dry out much faster than other synthetics, due to the high surface area of all those little balls.

I really wanted the hooded version, but they didn’t have one my size (large). They had 4-5 of them in XL, but they were all a putrid lime green (squirrels wouldn’t respect that). A couple days later I got to thinking that an XL might work while snowshoeing, since I would be wearing other layers, and I could slip this one on during lunch or long rest stops. I went back to the store and pleaded with the assistant manager that knows me. “Dan, it’s the wrong size, it’s an ugly green, and you have lots of them. Nobody wants one. How about if you knock off another 10% for me so I can help reduce your inventory?” He told me that I could take another 5% off one single item, and that I don’t dare tell anyone that he did this for me. I tried on each one they had, and one of them was a slight bit smaller than the others. So I was able to score a $220 hoody for $48 with tax. To hell with the color, as squirrels will be hibernating (or whatever they do all winter), and I’ll have an eVent shell over it to keep from scaring my friends.

I’ll also be interested in seeing how warm things are if I wear both the jacket and the hoody over it. The jacket is 12.9 oz., and the hoody is 15.0 oz. So 1# lb. 11.9 oz. I doubt that the combination would match my GoLite Roan Plateau parka, which is 8.4 oz. lighter, but it would be synthetic and not 800 fill goose down. This will give me a reason to look forward to the cold months.

http://www.patagonia.com/us/product/mens-nano-air-light-hoody?p=84280-0

Looks like Patagonia’s made a 40g Alpha anorak.