Lightweight rain jacket for PCT thru

Julia- it's going to be hard to fulfill criteria #2, even w/ pit zips rain jacket just don't breath that well

having said that, a light rain jacket that should meet #1 is the NF Triumph- it's very light at ~ 5 oz, so light that you should be able to throw in a good windshirt (@ ~ 4 oz)- you'd have the best of worlds so to speak and still under 10 oz

I dig my Marmot Mica. Its MSRP is around 130.00, very strong, average breathability, great wind breaker (we had 60+ MPH winds in 2010 from Campo).

It does tend to wet out in sustained rains, as we had those too, but held up for quite a few hours under hard exertion.

Mine is 7.6oz for Large.

I just bought the Rab Demand Pull-on eVent jacket for $180 delivered. The medium weighs 9.15 oz on my scale. The fit is nice and eVent rocks! Check Gear Deals and go down to "30% off RAB @ Backcountry.com". See if the sale is still happening on Rab Gear.

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The Rainshield is waterproof and extremely breathable but a bit fragile. Still, mine lasted for my entire thru-hike plus a few trips afterwards (and I wore it a lot on the PCT–my windshirt plus my Rainshield acted as my "insulating jacket"). You will not find a lighter waterproof jacket. The PCT is generally clear enough that the fragility of the jacket is not an issue. I even wore mine through 4 days of rain in the badly overgrown Glacier Peak section without any problems.

Best of all: it's $30. You can buy 2 and keep the other in your bounce bucket or on reserve somewhere in case you get a major tear.

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Thank you for all the advice.

I carried a windshirt (GoLite Ether) until I got to Cascade Locks, then switched to a Marmot Precip. That rain jacket choice was just what I happened to have at the time… I've since bought a Montbell Peak Shell that I like a looot better.

The reasoning for me was that for anything but sustained rain, I didn't really care if I got wet. You're going to be walking anyways, you'll keep warm. Turned out my mistake on the PCT was not having a warm enough shirt once it did start raining in Washington – I was still wearing my desert shirt. So I got wet and cold, not fun.

These days, I'm not even sure what use the "real" rain jacket is – in a week-long NW storm, you're going to be soaked the whole time regardless of what jacket you have. So I've been rolling with a wool hoodie and windshirt and just being wet. Considering doing the CDT next year with that setup… We'll see!

youre going to get wet or at least damp no matter what in sustainted drenching PNW rain … if not from anything else then yr own sweat at that humidity

just make sure the rest of yr clothing system can handle the moisture … and have an insulating layer that can deal with the wet that you put on when u stop