Consensus on down weight for a winter parka?

There are so many variables involved that I would think it difficult to find consensus.  No matter how much I read advice, specs, etc., it still comes down to personal experience and experimentation to finding the right combination – and that combination often changes due to weather conditions, etc.

Camping to -10F in Alaska I have used a 250g 800 fill parka (size US medium) on top of my active layers and stayed warm. Your parka requirements may be much different if you are planning on somewhere much more harsh such as the Brooks Range or upper elevation Alaska Range.

Well I will have to do something as my special order arrived and in XXXL it is too tight to layer underneath. Would the MH Absolute Zero be considered too much parka?

250 grams of fill in what size ?

Does anybody know the fill weight of the XL Absolute Zero parka >? That very important detail is missing from the MH website. I just pulled the trigger on one sight unseen

Columbia Sportswear customer service got back to me.

For other peoples interest here are the weights by size

S:500.0Grams
M:530.0Grams
L:570.0Grams
XL:610.0Grams
XXL:650.0Grams

This makes the XL a little bit warmer than my old down parka when the difference in size and fill weights are evened out

For a winter alpine/ice climbing belay jacket, I find 300 grams of hydrophobic, 800+ FP is the sweet spot for me here in the northeastern U.S.  While actively climbing, I tend to run on the warm side, however, during static belays, I cool off pretty fast and find I’m much happier with a thicker belay jacket than most of what my friends climb with.

I was climbing an alpine route on Mt. Katahdin two winters ago with a 250 gram, Rab Neutrino Endurance Jacket and wished I had something warmer.  The temps that day at 5K elevation hovered around 0ºF with steady winds.  Needless to say, I had the worst barfies of my life.  If you climb ice, you obviously know what barfies are & have probably enjoyed them once or twice.

To better answer you question(s), I recommend explaining what your intentions are for this jacket. High-altitude climbing in the Alaska Range/Denali? Alpine climbing on Mt. Hunter or Logan in the Yukon?  Winter camping in the Alaskan Bush/Dog sledding?

Visiting Alaska/Canada during winter. Brooks Range and or Denali. Too old to be climbing anymore but I want to look.

I asked because there seems to be nothing in between these Everest / 8000m parkas and stuff good around -20C and -20C is well within the limits of what I already own.

So basically I just bought an “OhShit” parka just in case. It isn’t quite as warm as the parka + insulated wind shell I have grown out of but it is lighter and will pack smaller by a small margin

I am conservative by nature and prefer a big margin of safety when touring, even tho I know I can get by and survive with much lower rated gear. I run hot when working and much colder than my mates when I stop [ like yourself a bit AlpineIce] so my Australian winter pack always has a Patagonia DAS in it when ski touring. The DAS will be my primary insulation layer for this trip in my planning although I have others. FYI an XL DAS parka fits me nicely over a ThermalPro fleece, if the XL in the A0 won’t layer over the DAS I’ll substitute a lighter mid-layer like the Nanopuff Bivvy pullover.

My old duvet is filled with 650 grams of 650 FP down, I have bigger shoulders now plus a bit of extra fat so it no longer fits well over extra layers so it is no longer suitable for that purpose.

The parka I had to send back was 375g of 800FP down in an XXXL.

Wrong cut for me or I think it would have worked

The S/H MH was actually cheaper by several hundred dollars so I think it’s going to be OK

Using Mr Nisleys tables I worked out that the parka has a Clo value of about 12. Does that sound about right?

Having just read though the latest gear review on down parkas for winter it seems that the range for these is between 7 ounces of 800FP down and 12 ounces.

Even if I took the median of these and assumed nine and a half ounces and rounded up by 30% because of size [ from a medium to my XXL]  I can only conclude that the testers all  had an internal furnace much more robust than mine.