Long-term shell durability

My experience, and the thesis under which I'm operating under at the moment, is that the quality of the shell fabric (in either a WPB or wind shell) is more important w/r/t durability than the weight. The Helium is a great example. The Pertex fabric is really densely woven and slick, which I think does a lot to explain it's excellent durability. Same can be said for the Houdini.

"Brian, this is great durability beta on the OR Helium! And it's still waterproof after all that pack wear? Awesome."

It's waterproof insofar as I've used the spendy "techwash" and DWR solution pair for this after I got back home. Waterproof is, as has been so well discussed on this site, a relative term. In Montana there were a couple of times when hail fell so hard that we just sort of stood there like livestock in a field, heads down and enduring it until it slacked off. No way to stay dry in that, but I wouldn't expect anything even the least bit breathable to do any better (?).

I would also caution against my experience being a major durability beta. While it's true that the CDT isn't as nicely brushed out all the time as the PCT and AT (generally …) are, the vast majority of time nothing was brushing against my coat. Someone doing a lot of continuous scrambling and bushwhacking would likely put more wear on a coat in a couple of weeks than I did in five months.

OTOH, I suspect in turn that I put more wear on the coat than a typical customer would in many years, so — it's all relative.

Brian, right, I'm not looking for absolutes, knowing that's impossible. And for durability I was actually thinking more along the lines of you just wearing it a lot even if not brushing through thorns of doom (or even anything). Call me pathetic, but I was excited to hear that it had lasted through near daily wear. :) My experience with failure has been solely due to abrasion from my clothes and my pack and not something DWR would help much with, so it sounds like it's at least a step up from that! Not proof of multi-year durability under, but something.

columbia omni-dry membrane used in their peak 2 peak shell is made of polyethylene. they tout the membrane as being extremely strong, a lot stronger than other membranes, meaning they can make thinner lighter membranes, so for th give weight of the jacket (440gm)it has a heavier shell than other jackets.
their membrane is about as breathable as event.
it has pit zips.
it's a polyester shell, weight for weight polyester is weaker than nylon

"My experience with failure has been solely due to abrasion from my clothes and my pack and not something DWR would help much with, so it sounds like it's at least a step up from that!"

Right, and indeed I wore my pack pretty much constantly when wearing the jacket. Here's a picture that shows the jacket pretty well, and was taken on the next-to-last day of my five month trip (just 2+ weeks ago), coming down from South Peak in the Florida mountains (some jackassery when my hiking partner and I found an ibex skull):
http://postholer.com/journal/viewJournal.php?sid=b12f25b31607e7f0ca474fda740aa078&jtype=photo&entry_id=27653&photo_id=35242

I've got the jacket beside me now, and indeed while there's an overall feeling of some wear, it's still in good shape and the shoulder areas under the pack straps are not worn out as I might have expected.