Jones Shralpinist Jacket Review

Mountain Weekly News ~

The Jones Shralpinist Jacket strikes hard, strikes fast, and gives your body all the mercy (unlike the Cobra Kai). This is a jacket that stands out and blends in; that adapts to everything but yields nothing; a jacket with the right amount of features whether shralping the backcountry or inbounds (or in my case both). The Shralpinist is stretching, it’s form-fitting, and it’s seemingly untouchable. Sounds about right for a jacket from a company founded by a rider who spends most of his time crushing coastal snowpacks on rare rocky peaks. Oh yeah, and it’s sustainable.

Specs

Let’s start with the fact that the Jones Shralpinist is super waterproof with a 30Kgrs/m2/30K hydrophilic membrane. The 20D Polyester backing builds on that, and guess what, it’s recycled so no hate on the polyester.

There are 2 external chest pockets, 2 hip pockets, an internal zip pocket, an internal cargo net, and of course pit zips on both sides. And in the forearm there’s a pass pocket, next to a diagram of the 5 red flags, ever-important as more people enter the backcountry who don’t even know the name Tremper. Plus there’s the RECCO, the fully-taped seams and the YKK AquaGuard zippers, the reccycled polyester zip cords and adjuster cord, so much recycling going on, yeah, the Shralpinist is made for the person who loves the wild. specially since the POW pledge and the recycled elements helps to ensure there is a future winter.

Testing on Snow

I got this jacket shortly before I broke my ankle so I only got to test it a little last winter. But as I started to recover and then was coaching lacrosse in the crazy spring storms of the mountains, it became my favorite jacket to rock when being pelted by storms while standing still calling out plays and subs.

Finally this season I was able to get out riding again and the Shralpinist was my favorite. I’d gotten used to its flexxy waterproofness and it was perfect for touring, especially as I taught my muscles again how to do it with all the strange positions of heading out.

We’ve had a warm, wet early season, gropple and blowing warm snow/rain pellets and so on.

The Jones Shralpinist handled it better than my face did. I never felt cold even when it was that miserable high-temp coastal snowpack feeling stuff we’re not accustomed to in the Rocky Mountain west.

I rode a couple days at Targhee getting pelted on the lift, followed by wind and wet hard snow on the the down. And I rocked it on Teton pass both for an early-season Thanksgiving Bowl lap (on Thanksgiving, weather be damned) as well as an exploratory mission on the pass on a day when everybody was flying off the road due to black ice and crazy wet snow early season conditions. Never once did the weather spit into my jacket, nor did I overheat.

Then I went off to Iceland with my son for some early-season snow exploration. We were going to ride Blafjoll but they didn’t have enough snow to open so we picked up some touring skis and went up ourselves. Towards the top the wind started howling in a way that you only get atop a tall ridge on an island in the middle of the North Atlantic. It was wet, and ripping so hard we thought the blow was gonna lift us off the hill. We got to the summit, a real fear sinking in as we ducked behind the top of the lift to switch back to downhill. We got back to the bottom shaken, adrenaline pumping, lungs struggling. But man was I dry and warm.

The stretchiness came in huge when touring, never feeling like I’m flexing or pumping. And at Grand Targhee Resort, where they now have RFID gates to get on the lifts, I keep my pass in the arm and had no problem hitting the spot. The girl at the cafeteria also said she was impressed the scanner could hit my card through the jacket since that didn’t work with a lot of jackets. Score some resort points for the Jones Shralpinist.

Overall Impression

The Jones Shralpinist ($599.99): Stretchy, Bulletproof, and Smart. The Jones Shralpinist has all the right pockets for everything you need. It’s protection from everything from pow to wet hard snow to North Atlantic blinding gusts. And yet even with that epic shield it’s still stretchy enough to let your arms go everywhere they need to be, keeping out the weather without feeling like you’re wearing hard plastic. Plus it’s got that conservation mind driving every detail.

So it kills it in the backcountry, at the resort, and everywhere in between. This Jones Shralpinist has your back as you push to any summit that lives in your dreams.

Related Ski & Snowboard Jackets

1. Outdoor Research Archangel Jacket
2. Patagonia Stromshift Jacket
3. Flylow Kane Jacket

The post Jones Shralpinist Jacket Review appeared first on Mountain Weekly News by Ryan Ariano.