I have found that for staying dry, a wideeee brimmed hat and a light fleece(dries very fast) and rain bibs are a must. No, rain bibs are not sexy looking, but very practical as hot water vapor(sweat) will rise leaving your clothes fairly dry even when working/hiking hard. If it starts raining really hard, take everything off but the long johns a long sleeved shirt and then put rain gear on while adding a jacket that has buttons down the front as this will allow you to vent copious amounts of sweat as said wide brimmed hat will overshadow the front of your clothes allowing you to keep your front open. As you will be moving, you create warm vapor that will rise and exit. The snap buttons are there for easy "bellowing" of your torso to keep "dry" from your own sweat.
I worked in a greenhouse/nursery in the pouring rain in the winter for several years at temperatures of 30-45 all day long, day in day out with this setup. Worked in the rain, ate in the rain, peed in the rain… Now I was using heavy rubber gear at the time, but others at the greenhouse also used 3 ply goretex as well to keep dry this way. Some tried using just the standard "pants", but did not work as well as bibs. We had no shelter all day long as we were digging bare root trees and shrubs.
Also several put snaps down the sides of their legs of their bibs so they could vent easily that way as well by simply unsnapping a couple. Beats the snot out of zippers that its either everything or nothing. Not as sexy as full length zippers though. Weight would be about the same I bet or slightly heavier though as one can get very light weight zippers.
At least here in Wetter climates regarding backpacking, PNW(includes Western Montana), its almost more important to have said rain bibs as the brush will soak you far far faster than the rain coming down will. Now I realize most of you guys are talking about hiking on well maintained trails, but any spur trail off of said well maintained trail most certainly will not be and will have corresponding amounts of brush that one must plough through. 3 minutes of brush dumping all of its collected water on you is like several hours of solid hard rain.
Here is my vote for bibs and a WIDE hat. Reverse Poncho style except one has the option of a full real suit when the weather turns nasty that the poncho doesn't really have. Poncho setup would be lighter i am sure.
And please do uh, enjoy the rain. Yea right. Now why did I not go hiking last weekend, hmm let me see… Oh yea, I melt in the rain. Got enough of doing that at the Greenhouse and nursery!
