I’d just climbed into the car after coming down off of Tonelagee in Wicklow, the skin on my legs absolutely burning from the rain that battered me like shards of icy glass on my descent down the mountain. I peel my rain jacket off, followed by my jumper, and I stuff them onto the dash as I start blasting the heating. I never sit with the car idling, but today I make an exception for myself as I rub the feeling back into my thighs.
Less than a minute later I’m rotating my jacket to get the other sleeve into the heat, smiling the grim grin of disbelief as I'm both amazed at how quickly the jacket is drying out - and therefore, I know there’ll be one more mountain on the cards today after all. Loading up google maps, I click on my next start point and pull out of the empty car park.
This summer I climbed every mountain on the island of Ireland - 275 peaks in a new record of 50 days, 5hrs, and 45minutes. It was my first time really dipping my toe into the FKT (fastest known time) world. I have a lot to share about the experience, but lets start with simple pieces, and work up from there. Today, I’m talking about the rain jacket that I wore practically every day of the project: the Patagonia Storm 10.
And the reason I wore it almost every day is because while I climbed through all these mountain ranges, Ireland experienced the wettest July on record. Some areas on the west coast experiences almost 4 times more rain than usual, as I was out there in all of it.
The Jacket - Technical Details:
Model: Patagonia Storm 10 (bought end of 2022)
Weight: 210 grams
Hydrostatic head: 20,000 (I explain hydrostatic head in this video)
Seams are internally taped, which is something that I personally expect to be in all good waterproof jackets these days.3 Pockets: one chest, two front/hand pockets. Whole jacket can pack into the chest pocket!
The hood: Synchs at the back, as well as a peaked/reinforced front.
So why did I pick this jacket?
I didn’t buy this jacket especially for this project, but I bought it for this kind of adventure. One of it’s key selling points for me was how light it is, and how small it packs down. The whole jacket packs down into the chest pocket, making it super easy to fit into a running vest, or other tight space.
It’s this pack-ability that I really wanted.
For something to be that small, light and packable, it did mean that it was missing a few features I usually like, such as pit zips and a way of synching the hood tighter around my face and not just at the back of the hood. But they were worth-while trades.
As I mentioned at the top of this piece, Ireland experienced the wettest summer of all time - and I did get wet. After several hours out in the very bad weather, this jacket would suffer from “wetting out”, which is when the amount of water attacking the jacket overwhelms it, and you get wet. But I was out on exposed mountains, in conditions that I wouldn’t expect to be able to stay dry in. Every time I’d adjust my hood, some rain would get in through my hands. It was just a part of life on those kinds of days. For the circumstances that this jacket went through, I think it survived incredibly well.
Will this be my forever jacket?
Yes - and no.
I did think about framing it at the end of the project - I cannot stress enough how much this jacket got me through.
But it also has a lot of life left in it. The only damage at the moment is a small hole I ripped in the right sleeve when scrambling down some rocks, which I’ll patch in the coming days. A thorough washing and some re-waterproofing spray, and this jacket has many more good, bad days ahead of it (although, hopefully none of them are too soon, I feel like I’ve only just started to dry out and it’s already a month since I finished).
I have other rain jackets that are heavier, thicker, and more durable, and I’ll probably use them on many of my winter hikes. This jacket is fantastic at doing what is was designed for, and saw me through stuff that was probably above its pay grade.
Below is my video review, where I talk through all of the above, and include some overlay clips of me squinting into the rain, praying for a rock to shelter behind.