What would you guys wear for 40 degrees weather? Going backpacking around Europe in Nov and being from FL, I dont really know anything about winter clothing.
I was thinking about some kind of coat or jacket to wear over my hoodies and sweaters.
someone posted about this in another thread a while ago and they were like a hardcore hiker. the thread was about outerwear and the comment about puffer/down jackets being a bad idea while hiking and went on to explain the basics of layering/heat retention. i'll try to give you the most "brief" rundown of what i remember here:
-you want a baselayer that's not made out of cotton. go for something moisture wicking. merino is great. cotton will get soaked and not dry out and leave you cold while wearing all your jackets. basically cotton sucks for winter clothes unless it's dry and it's your outerlayer.
-a good midlayer would be made out of fleece or something with similar capabilities(again, moisture wicking properties are key). you could top this off with an insulated vest or double layers here. this layer is supposed to trap warm air while letting moisture escape from the inner layer.
-outer layer should be some type of rainshell that keeps as dry as possible. it's good if that has some sort of ventilation mechanism, like pit zips. also good if it's packable, so you can easily store it when you don't need it.
you can shed layers as needed, depending on the weather. that's the big plus this has against just wearing a big winter jacket. a big winter coat would be pretty annoying to carry around most of the time if the weather turns out way "better" than expected. these days you can never be sure.
puffers/down jackets should mainly be worn when chilling at camp. if the down gets wet, it will lose it's ability to fluff up and trap warm air. so if you sweat in your down jacket, you'll wet those downs and make em useless. so bring and wear these when you are just hanging out. they give you the opportunity to shed layers while staying warm as long as you don't make them useless by getting the down damp.
with european temps around that time you should be pretty good with the rainshell plus layers thing. i live in northern germany, pretty close to the danish border, and i very rarely even have to use an actual winterjacket. i can usually persevere pretty alright just with layering what i have and top it off with some sort of wind or rainshell. but while it's never really that cold here, it's also never that warm and summers are short. probably a lot like the pacific northwest. that's what i hear from people from there that come here a lot.
Topic: the Other Clothes thread (Read 2339 times)