Lightweight, affordable dry pants/top for packrafting?

[Justin Baker]

I’m looking to get a dry top and pant for packrafting. I figure that I would prefer having a separate pant and top so that I can just use the top if it’s not too cold. Also, I figure that wearing the dry pants as rain pants with a separate lightweight rain jacket would be far more comfortable than wearing a full dry suit hiking in the rain.

So far I was looking at these pants, I emailed kokatat and they said they weight 1lb in medium. Does that sound about right for dry pants?

https://kokatat.com/product/tropos-swift-dry-pant-ptutsp

I could use recommendations for any lightweight dry tops

[Ben Brochu]

I owned a previous version of these dry pants before switching to a drysuit. Being designed for kayaks, most dry tops (that have a seal to mate with pants like these) also have a double tunnel, which you don’t need for packrafting, making for extra weight. In my experience, a dry pant/top combo will work for splash, but you will get wet if you swim. Alpacka’s drysuits have a center zip, so you can use just the top or the bottom as does the Kokatat Surge, which I use (and am very happy with so far.) If you have a whitewater deck and are banking on not swimming, a dry top may make sense for some trips, but usually it’s the bottom half that comes in the most handy for me.

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