Looking for a quick drying, moisture wicking, non-stinking short sleeve and long sleeve shirt….

I'm certainly not saying to avoid merino. It's great stuff. It's just worth knowing what it can do before buying it. I guess I should have read that wiki article. I was aware that wool absorbs water weight, but I didn't know about the interior & exterior acting differently.

Back to synthetics. It might be possible to make it dry even faster, or at least get less wet. When hiking with a friend in the rain, we both noticed that his BPL's Thoroughfare pants dried VERY quickly and much faster than my synthetic REI Sahara pants. I believe the biggest difference is that the BPL pants have a DWR treatment. I'm going to try that with my REI pants before my next trip, although I'd rather not give it a field test.

Of course–didn't think you were. And I was genuinely interested in hearing if there were conditions where synthetics out-performed merino. Obviously, they are more durable than thin wool. And the wiki article was pretty cool–never would have read it w/o your link.

The idea of adding DWR to REI pants is interesting–I have a couple pair of the REI Adventure pants I'd be interested in trying (maybe keep one as a control). Are you thinking spray-on or wash-in?

Create a thread if you try it–am curious.

I already have the spray on stuff, so I'll try that. I'm wondering how well the DWR and permithrin will go together. I'll give it a shot next week. I have a couple pairs of these pants, so I can try some sort of comparison with them.

Yeah sorry, I know Arcteryx is expensive, but the phase SL long sleeve and shortsleeve shirts are the only synthetics I've seen that don't get stinky. They dry super quick, wick well, are super lightweight, and compress to the size of a tennis ball.