Hoods on American waterproofs

It might be technology, ie British manufacturers innovated first b/c weather and open moors and US manufactures didn't feel the need to b/c at the time the US and UK were highly differentiated market places and UK brands had little foothold in NA.

Might also be use, there are probably more people out in bad weather in the UK then there are in the US, and people out in bad weather in the US tended to be climbers who were wearing a helmet anyways and so didn't really need the stiffened brim?

I don't really know, but US manufacturers like Patagonia and Arcteryx have gotten much better with their hoods, I'd say on par.

I think it might have been Arc'Teryx who really brought the stiffened brim to the US marketplace though with their gluing technology. Once they innovated every one had to follow either by gluing in a stiffener or sewing in a wire.

Might also be fashion, tech jackets were more fashion here then in the UK and manufactures might have been afraid of hurting sales by putting a big ugly wired brim in that might not pack well into a coller.

Might be something completely different though, or a combination of all factors, lol.

Some interesting thoughts, Robert. I can't see it being an issue of technology, but you might be close when you mention fashion. Fold-away hoods with good peaks are tough to do and usually make for a bulky collar, so cutting back on the inflexibility would be handy for a fashion jacket. I suppose I'm just slightly appalled that such fashion jackets are then sold for the serious outdoors market… but of course it's nothing new.

Could it just be different expected conditions?

A typical british walker buying an outdoors jacket is expecting to use it in exposed conditions – driving rain – and expecting to do it a lot.

That's hilarious, IHMO. I could not have a more diametrically opposed view!

I've owned several waterproof jackets designed in the UK, and I think they've all got massive problems, especially their lame hoods and insufficient inside pockets!

For example, I've currently got a RAB Latok jacket in size Large. This is supposed to be a mountaineering jacket, and that's what I got it for. The internal pockets are too small for my size large insulated mittens and way too small for any 1 liter water bottle. The jacket also has the *worst* hood I've ever used in a jacket.

Sure, it's got a little stiffner in it so the water doesn't get in your face, but one of the end caps on the stiffner is already coming off. It's only a matter of time till it pushes through the fabric. It will probably be years till it does, but I wish it wasn't there at all. A bit of water on my face is really not a concern to me; the long term viability of the jacket is significantly more important. The hood does not fit over my helmet, which more or less renders it useless. The hood does not swivel with my head when I swivel my neck, and the hood closure does not seem to have been designed with goggles in mind. The hood can not be easily adjusted volume wise to adjust for my hat state.

In comparison, my patagonia paclite jacket (obviously no longer made…obviously vintage) has massive internal stash pockets for anything I want to shove in: a one liter nalgene, belay mittens and goggles can all fit on one side. The hood fits over my helmet or can easily be trimmed down to be snug over my head, hat or bare as the case may be. It swivels with my neck. My other north american designed (patagonia, marmot, integral designs) jackets all share those characteristics.

I'd guess, not to be too snide but just as my extremely different opinion, that the Brits (and swiss) design stuff for folks who are never too far from a warm house or hut. The north americans are designing stuff for folks who are more concerned about stiffening rods not sticking through their hoods, more concerned about having helmets and bare heads fit inside those hoods, and decently sized pockets for nalgenes and belay mittens.

Also, the British stuff I've had just isn't tailored for my body as well as patagonia stuff has been historically. I'm kinda tall (6'5") and I've found the torso lengths and arm lengths on british stuff to be insufficent for me.

I'm really finding this hilarious. Some friends of mine and I were just talking about this, and here is the opposite alleged by somebody else! I honestly don't know that much about non-mountaineering gear, but in terms of mountaineering gear, well, it's the way I wrote it…

It's really tough to design something that will satisfy everyone, so most manufacturers don't seem to even attempt it. When they do, they usually come up with some sort of compromise that does not work that well for anyone! Keep in mind, Americans tend to wear some sort of ball cap most of the time anyway. For me, a hood is a must have option. I personally like a smaller footprint, tighter fitting hood that will pull up quickly in the rain and snug up right OVER my ball cap. The brim on my cap keeps the rain off my face, the hood keeps my head dry! Then I just flip it down when the rain subsides and continue on my way.

To each his own,
Peter

"Might also be use, there are probably more people out in bad weather in the UK then there are in the US, and people out in bad weather in the US tended to be climbers who were wearing a helmet anyways and so didn't really need the stiffened brim?"

Or, could it be that UK has more sucky weather than USA, in general. If my 3 months in London is any reference, I hated english weather. Rainy and drairy.

I think its the British Superiority complex that may lead one to think that "more people out in bad weather in the UK then there are in the US". Its just that in most parts of USA, weather dont suck as much.

Also, the specific hood design that is being discussed here is more important in persistant rain than in variable weather conditions (rain/snow/sun) etc. So, its a much more important feature for UK conditions than for USA.

"Keep in mind, Americans tend to wear some sort of ball cap most of the time anyway."

That's something I've heard before (and experienced: I used to lead walking groups in Maine where it was a common choice and seemed to be very effective) and it certainly explains why the peak might not be so essential, but in that case a hood with no peak at all seems to make more sense all round. With ultralight gear the situation is even more obvious, since a lightweight yet functional peak isn't an easy compromise, and a number of manufacturers simply leave off the peak entirely rather than put something inadequate on their gear.

There's no simple answer, I suspect, and hopefully nobody has misunderstood this thread as any sort of general slight against American products. I'm simply interested to see what people think about jackets with almost completely unstiffened peaks, which seem to me to offer so little benefit to the wearer. My thanks to everyone for your responses.

"I'd guess, not to be too snide but just as my extremely different opinion, that the Brits (and swiss) design stuff for folks who are never too far from a warm house or hut. The north americans are designing stuff for folks who are more concerned about stiffening rods not sticking through their hoods, more concerned about having helmets and bare heads fit inside those hoods, and decently sized pockets for nalgenes and belay mittens."

I kind of disagree, for two reasons – I just spent a year in the UK, including over their wettest summer ever – I was walking in the Lake District in close to the heaviest rain I've ever seen (and I've also lived in PNG and walked in parts of Japan that get 11 METRES of rain a year), which was the same week the entire Midlands were flooded. My take on it, having used Paramo gear, Australian/Kiwi Goretex, a Rab eVent jacket and a couple of Mont Bell gore-texes is that the UK stuff works in the rain whereas the Mont Bell jacket (which I think of, fairly or unfairly, as American style) – which has been fine in winter mountaineering in Japan – just didn't. The weather in the UK can be really nasty, so even if you are just an hour away from a comfy pub if your raingear isn't designed to keep the rain out then you're going to get very wet, cold and uncomfortable – which is what happened to me when my MB leaked from everywhere. What were the specific design flaws? Well, short length – great for climbing and mountaineering and reducing weight but a wet crotch is not much fun after an hour or so and can contribute to hypothermia; mesh-backed pockets – great for breathability in dry or cold conditions but any water that gets into the pockets goes straight through to your inner layers; pockets facing the wrong way, in the wrong place (at hip belt level) and with inadequate zippers and zipper flaps … and … a floppy, unwired hood that couldn't keep the rain out of my eyes and couldn't be adjusted so that the mist swirling around in the torrential rain didn't just go plunging down my neck. I've worn my Australian gore-texes in similar conditions and not had a problem, and I've worn Paramo in similar conditions and not had a problem.

With regard to wired brims, they are also standard in Australian and NZ jackets – and I don't think you're going to argue that bushwalkers here or in NZ "are never too far from a warm house or hut".

Well guys, I guess we'll have to agree to disagree.

I prefer semi-floppy brims, imho, they work significantly better for me. I much prefer to have a well designed hood that swivels and adjusts to stay tight on my head; that's my priority in assessing the efficacy of hood design. I've never had a problem with a 'floppy' american brim in horrific weather anywhere in the world.

I've spent some time in the UK climbing, and full on conditions are certainly inspiring. But it was really nice to know that the pub was only a few hours walk away.

I've never seen rain anywhere like in Wadi Rum: I was there in 1994 when it rained something like 35cm in just under 15 minutes. It was informative that a desert rainstorm was much more violent than the soaking flow of cloudforests and rainforests I've visited. It really made me wonder what a monsoon must be like…Anyway, while my patagonia shell kept me nice and dry till I took it off to play in the rain, I doubt that my experience in Wadi Rum's rain really has much do with the location that the jacket I wore was designed.

If you've still got your MB shell, and it does leak like a sieve, you might consider sending it back to them. Gore is rather serious, especially with the offshore design and brand licensees like Japan's Mont-Bell, about making sure that the product works.

Incidentally, the RAB eVent jacket I mentioned above would fail most of your preferred design characteristics except the wire brim (mesh pockets, high waist, and no doubt Arapiles will find the zippers and flaps inadequate). I can't think of any technical jacket I've had in the past twenty years that didn't have pocket placements above my climbing harness or hipbelt of my pack. Your statement strikes me as extremely odd. But then again, I'd never buy something that I didn't think was going to work for my purposes.

I've also been perfectly soaked, yet managed to stay nice and warm through the miracles of wool and polypropylene. And I haven't had water get in through my pockets to soak my inner layers, ever. Obviously, YMMV.

I've never used a shell designed and made for the Australian or NZ market, I look forward to checking them out. I can always cut out the brim stiffner rod…;)

I'm quite sure that Reinhold Messner could have climbed the regular route of Mt Everest backwards wearing a burlap sack. I don't think it's the gear. I know Australian, Kiwi, British, Slovene, Polish, Russian, Kazakh, and even French alpinists and trekkers who succeed at their goals at least as well as their north american counterparts, wearing all sorts of outlandish garb.

So, I guess that we've found that at least this American has a radically different perspective from yours. I guess that these companies are filling niches: Coke tastes different in just about every country I've been in. And I hope not to be caught dead in that stuff my European climber friends think is stylish and cool!

"I can't think of any technical jacket I've had in the past twenty years that didn't have pocket placements above my climbing harness or hipbelt of my pack. Your statement strikes me as extremely odd."

Just to clarify, the pockets on the MB are at the bottom of the jacket, not on the chest. So the bottom part of the pockets falls under a hipbelt. The new version has a single vertically-zipped top pocket.

And I agree that Messner could climb in anything but you can actually buy Messner licensed gear in Japan …