Windbreaker Jacket

WE SUPPORT AN AMAZING CAUSE

As already alluded to in the title, hiking jackets are by design lightweight. This is because they are generally used for layering. If you’re not sure what layering is, check out this post. In short it’s the process of adding or removing layers of clothes in response to your environment. You already do it every time your cold and put on a sweater. That’s effectively layering.

Anyway, back to the characteristics of hiking jackets. Hiking jackets also tick the box for being lightweight as they are normally made from very lightweight materials. This is to not only be light when actually wearing the jacket, but also to be light when it’s not being worn and is instead being carried in your day pack.

Breathable

Accompanying the waterproofing capabilities mentioned in the previous section, many hiking rain jackets also have some element of breathable capability as standard. For a jacket to be breathable it basically means that it is made from a material that has pores on it that are small enough to keep water out e.g. rain water but large enough to let moisture and heat from your body out e.g. sweat. This keeps your body comfortable and dry from the inside as well as the outside.

Windcheater is also known as windbreaker. Due to their incredible portability, lower price, and increased breathability, many wear it as a simple windcheater more often than either a hardshell or rain jacket, which is why it is the most versatile of all layering options.

Made primarily of wind resistant and breathable nylon or similar lightweight material. it is more compact, and potentially allows greater breathability by easier air and vapor transfer. So when there is breathability, there is no chance for providing your warmth.

Wind resistance and breathability are both attributes that are highly desirable for a wind cheater to have, and are both dependent on the type and weave of the fabric used in constructing it. But these two attributes tending to work at odds with each other. Consider: both wind resistance and breathability have to do with the ability of air to move through fabric. If no air can move through, then the fabric will be very wind resistant. If lots of air can pass through, then it will of course be very breathable. For single layered windcheaters, these attributes tended to work against each other, and jackets were either very breathable but not super wind resistant, the exact opposite of that, or fell in the middle of the spectrum in both.

There are two notable techniques that companies used to try to get around this apparent offsetting of desirable features. A good windcheater has a felt or mesh liners inside of the jacket. These liners have the effect of greatly increasing wind resistance, as they provided more material for wind to travel through. When a jacket is pretty good in both attributes, breathability and wind resistant then there is the extra material that makes you feel hot and sweating.

So, if a windcheater is only wind-reistant then there will no breathability. If there is breathability, then it cannot be wind proof. If the windcheater is both breathable and also is wind resistant, then the material structure is with extra layer mesh lining etc – making it costlier as well as warmer.