I was going through some Mont Bell and Ripen catalogues I picked up in Japan at Easter and noticed that both companies are using a waterproof/breathable ePTFE tent fabric called X-Trek (Miguel has mentioned it a couple of times). The MB catalogue has a little diagram showing that it's three layer but with no PU layer, so I presumed that it was an eVent derivative. Then my wife kindly translated the prominent warning text in the Ripen catalogue: interestingly they warn that the fabric can lose its waterproofness if it's contaminated by oil. So, given that eVent's USP is that it's oleophobic, it's clearly not eVent. Which leads me to suspect that it's basically original Gore-Tex – complete with the oil/dirt contamination problem that was around in about 1980! I suspect that we won't be seeing X-Trek used in clothing ….
