If hiking, backpacking, and climbing from spring through fall teaches us the fundamentals of layering our clothing for comfort in variable weather, the backcountry in winter confers a graduate degree in layering. In mild temperatures, getting wet with perspiration or precipitation merely risks discomfort. In freezing temps, it can quickly lead to hypothermia and actually become life-threatening.
There’s one certainty about the clothing layers we use in winter: We get our money’s worth out of them. While a rain shell or puffy jacket may rarely come out of our pack on a summer hike or climb, we almost invariably wear every article of clothing we carry when backcountry, Nordic, or downhill skiing, snowshoeing, snowboarding, climbing, or trail running in winter. That’s money spent wisely to make us more comfortable and safer.
Hybrid Insulated Jacket The North Face ThermoBall Active Jacket
$150, 14.5 oz. (men’s medium)
Sizes: men’s S-XXL, women’s XS-XL ems.com
The December sun was about to drop over the horizon, and the air temperature was dropping even faster—but I was enjoying the skate-skiing around Bear Basin, in the quiet ponderosa pine forest outside McCall, Idaho, too much to head for the car just yet. It didn’t matter. I knew I could wring out the last minutes of daylight and stay warm, despite my base layer being quite sweaty, thanks to the hybrid design and unique insulation in the ThermoBall Active Jacket.
Down Jacket Mountain Hardwear StretchDown Jacket
$260, 1 lb. 2 oz. (men’s medium)
Sizes: men’s S-XXL, women’s XS-XL moosejaw.com
From backcountry skiing in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains in a below-zero wind chill, to resort skiing on a sunny but frosty day with temperatures in the teens Fahrenheit, this puffy jacket stood out for three reasons. First and foremost, it kept me warm whether as my only insulating layer over one base layer and under a shell (while resort skiing) or when I simply pulled it on over other layers in the backcountry. Second, it felt noticeably more comfortable than some bulky, stiff puffy jackets, because both the fabric and the down-filled chambers actually stretch. And third, after I got its lining wet with sweat or its shell damp from falling snow, it still kept me warm.
Throughout four straight days of backcountry skiing in the mountains above Lake Tahoe in early February, winds gusting at 40 to 50 mph buffeted us—the pockets of protected terrain seemed rare—and snow fell for three of those days, heavily at times. A few days later, I was Nordic skate skiing and snowshoeing in Idaho’s Boise Mountains, on days ranging from overcast and windy to breezy with warm sunshine. On all of those days, temperatures were cold enough—from the low 20s to the mid-30s Fahrenheit—to quickly chill me if I either under-dressed for the wind or sweated from overdressing. And for hours at a time on those days of widely ranging conditions and exertion levels, I wore Patagonia’s new Nano-Air Jacket.