$350; hellyhansen.com
I’m a whore. I’m not brand loyal. So, when gear works perfectly, I see no need to exchange it for something new just because of its newness. What is it, a Larry King wife? No. It’s a jacket. I’ve had this one for four years. It could’ve finished med school by now but it’s been slumming with me instead. And it has no business being intact. Sitting around campfires should have burned holes in it, hitting a tree at Snowbird should’ve torn it, a fellow hosteller should’ve stolen it. But I’ve put nearly 500 days in this thing—a ski traverse in Spitsbergen, a couple hundred ski-touring days in Colorado and British Columbia, and neck-deep weekends in Utah—and it’s going nowhere. It’s been washed and dried but the inside of the collar won’t come clean: It’s black and crusted like the inside of a half-full Nalgene bottle lost for a month and found behind the water heater. And it vaguely smells like Jet B heli fuel after I spilled some on it. But nothing fundamental has changed. It’s light, the pit zips are huge, the hood easily adjusts to any melon, and it’s just baggy enough to mitigate the nerdiness of the tech. It’s the only jacket I’ve worn in the mountains for nearly half a decade. Though mine is a solid orange, the new colors are slightly Euro-fruity. But it’s a small price for perfection. —Jake Bogoch, Editor, Skiing Magazine

Check out more gear picks from Skiing Magazine.

Advertisement