You Have to Trust Your Gear…

This post seems to have gotten lost somehow.  I am re-posting it in March.

January 24, 2016

I decided to test my Sierra Designs DriDown jacket on my walk to work yesterday morning. Just before leaving the house to brave 20° temps with 15mph sustained winds and heavy snow, I held my 13oz 600 fill down Jacket in the shower for 30 seconds, shook it off and started hiking.  By the time I got to work, I was sweating. Two hours later it was completely dry! The new version of this lightweight jacket has a waterproof membrane in the outer shell. Amazing.  I love just about everything that Sierra Designs comes up with.  They are genuinely innovating and changing the way things are expected to function.  Some of the changes are small like a simple zipper design on the Zissou sleeping bag and some are big like the backpacking rain jacket with the flap on the front to flip over your hip belt.  No matter how big the change, the things they are doing just work.

I also tried out our new Altera brand socks at the same time.  They are made of alpaca wool which, according to what I can discover, is 30% warmer than sheep’s wool and is much more naturally soft.  Well, I can attest to the softness and that they are warm!  I wore my regular pants and shoe combo for the winter (shorts and light hiker shoes) along with the lovely green Prevail model socks.  I slogged through snow drifts that frequently came a bit over the tops of my socks so my shoes were packed with snow.  Well, long story short my feet, although getting cold when the snow filled my shoes, stayed warm and cozy as soon as the snow was able to melt during the walk.  I kept the wet socks on all day at work and they were just fine—very little water stayed trapped around my feet.  By the end of the day, they too were dry.  Add to this, the fact that they are MADE IN KENTUCKY and you have a phenomenal product that I am proud to have on my feet.