Lowe Alpine Ice Light - First Look

The Ice Light is intended squarely as a lightweight alpine jacket, so it's cut for performance and mobility with a helmet hood. It's also a bit of a flagship garment for Lowe's new Gore-Tex range. Yep, the company that majored on not using Gore-Tex has abandoned both TPC and eVENT in favour of the big G so there's an onus on making a bit of a splash in a big pond full of other brands using Gore-Tex.

So does the Ice Light stand out as anything special? Here are our first impressions.

Then there's a stiffened panel at the base of the main zip for easier fastening, a full helmet hood and strange vestigial vents - above - in the upper arms rather than full pit-zips. Finally the seam tape is the new , ultra-narrow, ultra-tape stuff, which reduces weight slightly, but also ups breathability by reducing the area of tape used by around a A3 sheet of paper. Nice.

The XCR fabric is undoubtedly less breathable than Gore-Tex Paclite, but it feels significantly butcher, plus in the high, dry mountain environment it's intended for, effective breathability is significantly less than in lower, damper British conditions. It's still not as effective a fabric as eVENT, the fabric which Lowe Alpine used last year though.

The hood though is much, much better. Last year's version was a floppy horror that need a helmet to make the peak viable. This year's has a stiffer, bigger peak and works just fine without a helmet, cinching down nicely and turning with your head. Not quite as good as the ME hood yet, but far better than it was. Fine with a helmet too.

Mobility seems good as well with the cuffs and hem staying put when reaching up or outwards, so those hem to cuff Helix panels seem to do the job. We're less convinced by the small venting zips on the upper arm. In breezy conditions they make appreciable difference, but we found them really fiddly to open, particularly one-handed while wearing gloves. The diagonal angle of the openings makes it hard to get a straight pull. We're also a little concerned by the untethered shock cords for the hood adjusters. Potentially ouch, but to be fair, not so far.

So far performance has been excellent - mobility is good, most of the fasteners are easy to use and stuff like the stiffened panel at the bottom of the main zip really does work to make the jacket easier to use. Like we said above, the fabric's not as breathable as Paclite or eVENT, but the low weight and small pack size make it very stowable.

In short, as a durable but lightweight alpine shell, we reckon the Ice Light is a winner and, on a broader level, suggests that Lowe Alpine has got things right with its new Gore-Tex range. More feedback when we've used it a bit more and a bit harder.

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