Windproof fleece or soft shell, or maybe highly wind-resistant fleece? Whatever it is, we take a quick look at Lowe Alpine's award-winning Glacion jacket.
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Lowe Alpine Glacion - First
Look
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Price:
£140.00
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Weight: 571 grammes (men's
medium)
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Features Polartec
Windbloc ACT and Polartec WindPro fabrics, shaped collar
with with cinch system and soft lining, twin side pockets,
hem drdawcord with single-hamdced side-pull, reflective
piping. Women's version also available.
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Nice protective fabric, slim performance cut.
Wrists have no fastening, a hood would make it more
versatile.
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The Concept The Glacion's another one of those dratted
softshell things. Or is it just a windproof, or at least highly
wind-resistant fleece. Really it doesn't matter what you call it,
it's a breathable, highly wind and water resistant jacket for
all-round mountain use. You should be able to rely on it until the
point where ut really starts bucketing down.
The Glacion won a Polartec Apex award for innovative use of
Polartec fabrics,so we were interested to see how well it would work.
Features The cut's simple and nice and slim fitting, but the
key to the Glacion is the fabric which is Polartec's Windbloc ACT
combined with side-panels made from WindPro.
Windbloc ACT is uses a 98 per-cent windproof membrane. The extra
two per-cent of non windproofness is reckoned to dramatically improve
breathability making the fabric a claimed 'twice as breathable as
other windproof fleece'.
WindPro is a densely woven normal fleece and is used for the
sidepanels of the torso and underside of the upper arm to give more
ventilation where it's not exposed to the weather.
In Action We're pretty cynical about windproof fleece here on
OM. Most of the ones we've tried simply haven't been breathable
enough giving a distinctive boil in the bag clammy feeling with any
sort of active use, so we approached the Glacion with caution.
The first
thing you notice is that the cut really is nice - neat and tapered
with a slim athletic fit, but not restrictive. Lowe hasn't had much
credit for its recent technical clothing, but the cut on on the kit
we've tried has been excellent for slim to average built users.
It's actually quite a simple jacket the just a hem-cord,
neck-cinch cord and twin pockets sited high to clear pack and harness
belts. The key to it though, is the fabric which has a fleecey inner
surface for insulation and a hard, smooth outer face for
protection.
We used it back to back with a Rab Phantom on a restless Lake
District day and were really impressed. The windproofing is far
better than the dense fleece used for the Phantom and coped happily
with a stiff breeze and the odd drizzly assault. Even better, the
combination of the 98 per-cent windproof main body and the less
wind-resistant but more breathable side panels meant that there was
no clamminess and it felt more like wearing a fleece than a near
windproof softshell.
In really cold, windy conditions, the side panels may let a little
too much cold air through, but in normal use, we reckon it's a
compromise worth making. Most of the other bits worked just fine -
the hem and neck cords let you cinch things down, but we were
surprised there was no cuff adjustment. Next season's version gets
inernal cuffs though, so it's being sorted and again, in most
conditions, it's not a major issue.
We would have preferred to have an integrated hood, but that's a
personal take and a hat works as well most of the time.
