Insulated Parkas

Beginner's Guide to Backpacking

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Insulated Parkas

Cora brings a down jacket on every mountain backpacking trip, even in August, and wears it regularly during early breakfasts and late dinners. In the summer, I find I stay warm enough without one if I put on my rain pants and jacket to block the wind and trap warm air. In the winter, I normally bring a down jacket. If you do decide you need an insulated parka, your first choice involves the type of fill. Since you'll face the same choice in an even more important context when you buy a sleeping bag, I'll hit the subject lightly here and go into more depth in the sleeping bag chapter.

For years, chemists have sought a synthetic equivalent to down, the innermost plumage of ducks and geese. So far, nothing they have produced can equal high-quality down on the basis of insulating capacity for a given weight. Good down is also more compressible than the best synthetics, which saves room in your pack. While down costs more than synthetics initially, it retains its loft longer, so the cost per year is usually less if you take good care of the shell fabric. On the negative side, down, like cotton, loses all its resiliency when it gets wet. A wet down jacket is as worthless as a pack of used bubble gum, and it's likely to remain worthless until you get a day of brilliant sunshine or drop a lot of quarters in the nearest Doozy Duds clothes drier. Synthetic insulators retain their loft when wet and dry much faster.

My preference in parka insulation has been honed by my experiences in the wintertime Rockies and in the high, glaciated mountains of the Alaska Range. For those climates, which are very cold and relatively dry, I prefer down, particularly if protected by a water-resistant shell. In the wetter climate of the Northwest and Northeast, and in coastal Alaska and Canada, a synthetic-filled parka is probably a better bet.

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