high loft hats/balaclavas

Try:

Jacks R Better Down Hood

You might try making the Ray-Way bomber hat with two layers of PG3D batting. The loft in mine is even, and it’s warm down to 0F (I usually wear it over a 100wt fleece watchcap). For real cold, I have a down sleeping bag hood (Marmot; Pertex nylon/Gore Dryloft; 4.8 oz) with about 3″ of loft. It makes me look like Kenny from South Park, but it’s warm!

Feathered friends makes a detachable hood for one of their jackets:

Volant hood

Sometimes you can find a relatively inexpensive down jacket with a detachable hood. Last year I bought a Land’s End down jacket from Sears on sale for something like $80. It has a snap on down hood that is real warm and weighs something like 4 or 5 oz.

Dan

Dan (and anyone else who is interested),

Be sure that after clicking the link entitled “Volant Hood” in your/Dan’s Post, to also click on the image of the Volant Hood on the FF webpage.

This will bring up a larger view of the hood. FF still has edited in (they did this a very long time ago) the face of a very famous UL hiker in his own right, either that or he’s practicing for pursuing a modeling carerr once his current assignment is completed.

I’m hoping that BPL will sponsor a contest where the first 10 responders with the correct identity of the person wearing the volant hood will win a backpacking trip with, well…with the person wearing the hood.

Oh, oh!! I know who that is! Did I win! I sure hope so. That pictures cracks me up.

Adam

Douglas…did you create that hood yourself by removing it from a sleeping bag, or did you buy it that way? I wasn’t able to find it on the Marmot website, but it looks very warm :)

Any high loft head covering not attached to your overlying or underlying clothing will tend to not turn completely with you when you turn at night, or that has been my experience with the Nunatak down balaclava. I have gone to using a 100 wt fleece balaclava under the Montane Lightspeed hood and it works…down to freezing so far.

>Douglas…did you create that hood yourself by removing it from a sleeping bag, or did you buy it that way?

I bought it that way; the hood was sold separately from the bag. Here’s an (expired) eBay auction that describes it a bit better. Unfortunately these don’t seem to be readily available.

>Any high loft head covering not attached to your overlying or underlying clothing will tend to not turn completely with you when you turn at night, or that has been my experience with the Nunatak down balaclava. I have gone to using a 100 wt fleece balaclava under the Montane Lightspeed hood and it works…down to freezing so far.

I haven’t had that experience with my Ray-Way Bomber Hat or the Marmot bag hood. I use a quilt, so I just wear it as a hat; it isn’t attached. If it’s only freezing, the Marmot bag hood is overkill.

Wool watch cap (stretchy wool) and polypropylene balaclavas. You can buy or order polypropylene balaclavas from any military surplus type store.

I prefer the wool watch cap and if its really cold or windy out, throw my parka hood over the watch cap. Why outdoor companies are making cold weather coats without hoods these days absolutely confounds me.

Vlad

The only thing worse than no hood on a cold weather jacket or parka is a hood that is NOT designed to turn when you turn your head.

I simply love a well designed hood, but there are two things that i hate about a poorly designed hooded garment:

1) turning my head and find myself staring into the side of the hood, and…

2) having to turn my entire torso at the waist in order to avoid #1 above.

Perhaps i’m too demanding?

How about this? :)

http://www.theparkashop.com/overfill/downmask.html

> How about this? :)

Wow! That is impressive! I’m bookmarking that URL.

I spent the night in my hammock and quilt last night. Outside temp was below 0F, and inside the hammock it was +1F when I checked. I wore my OR Gorilla Balaclava (the older non-Windstopper version; 3.8 oz) with nose cover, and wore a free airline sleeping eye-shield (0.3 oz) over my eyes. (In the backcountry I usually just wear my ski goggles, loosely.) Over that I wore my Ray-Way Bomber Hat (single layer PG3D; 1.0 oz). It kept me warm enough, although I think 0F is close to the limit for these two layers. (In the past in colder weather I have added a 1.0 oz. 100-wt fleece watch cap in between.)

During the night, I tried adding a disposable dust mask (0.1 oz) with the metal nose-shaping strip removed (to keep it from freezing to my skin). It was hard to tell if made a big difference in my overall warmth, but I seem to have slept more deeply when I wore it. With the dust mask in place, my entire face was covered.

Around 4am I switched from the Ray-Way Bomber Hat and eye-shield to my Marmot down bag hood (4.8 oz) in full ‘Kenny’ mode (face closed to a 4″ hole). It worked fine too. There was enough loft around my face that my eyes didn’t get cold. I later added the dust mask, and that pretty much blocked the small face hole.

I am kinda bummed, because it was supposed to get down to -16F last night; it didn’t. I’m still trying to find the lower temp threshold for my winter gear. But for me, the OR Gorilla Balaclava works fine for working hard in cold temps during the day (it is sufficiently breathable that it doesn’t ice up) and I have two high-loft hats that handle in-shelter temps to 0F and lower. Since the Ray-Way Bomber Hat weighs only one ounce, I carry it year-round (summer overnight temps are often below freezing). I wear the Ray-Way Bomber Hat in camp in the winter, then if it’s cold enough I can add the Marmot bag hood, eye-cover and dust mask in shelter.

Anyway, I hope this info about cold-weather head-coverings is useful to somebody.