UKC

Toby Archer looks at the new Jöttnar Asmund, a very lightweight mountain shell with a superb hood. He finds it's highly breathable - but whether this is 100% a good thing depends what you're doing in it, he reckons.

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In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

Thank you for the review. I have had a neoshell jacket for some time now. I wouldn't buy one again because of the drawbacks mentioned. Its lack of windproofness means I can get get very cold on belays. I Have used it successfully for activities where I can keep moving but for winter climbing it is a poor choice. I also find that in very wet conditions, the fabric wets out and takes a long time to dry. All in all neoshell is a material which doesn't do anything particularly well.

In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

The more I read, see and hear, the less convinced I am by neoshell jackets. I think it's far better suited for trousers where that extra breezyness doesn't matter so much to me. I've got the 1st gen Rab stretch neo pants (before they added kick patches, and I love the breathability they offer and find them more than waterproof enough. They do show wear at the inner thigh where they've been rubbing though, and I'd hate to think how a rucksack would have affected a jacket.

In reply to alan monks:


Last winter I climbed a lot in the Hymir smock, made out of the same Neoshell as the Asmund, and didn't find I did get particularly cold in it. And with the Jöttnar Bergelmir, being a thicker face fabric, I've never noticed it being a big issue at all, so although spotting the wind permeability of NeoShell seems quite a personal thing (and I do notice it! For others it doesn't seem to bother them), I wouldn't write off the membrane for winter climbing. Both the Bergelmir and the Marmot Nabu which I reviewed a few years back http://www.ukclimbing.com/gear/review.php?id=5883 make good winter climbing shells to my mind.


Again, not my conclusion but it is always really interesting to hear what others think. Have you tried the newest Goretex Pro? My understanding is that they made that air permeable too, in order to compete with NeoShell on breathability. I wonder if anyone is finding that not windproof enough.

In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:

I should note the hood DOES fit will over my ski helmet, because looking at the photo in the review that supposedly illustrates this, it looks like it can't fit over! But, I promise it does, and you can zip it up comfortably when it is over a helmet.

In reply to TobyA:

>


I haven't tried the new goretex but I am looking around for another jacket. My old grouted jacket was very windproof and waterproof. I am much more comfortable in pertex clothing which seems to keep me much warmer and better protected from the wind. It is also very lightweight and very breathable. Just not very waterproof. Is there a decent quality waterproof pertex?

In reply to UKC/UKH Gear:
Second word in of the main part of the review, Jottnar is spelt wrong and then a couple of other times in the review.

In reply to jezb1:
I think that's more a formatting error with the use of some special characters, 'ö' in this case.

It's a problem I've noticed on UKC and UKH, especially in the logbooks where routes, crags or locations require a special character and you end up with the HTML code for that character instead... eg.

http://www.ukhillwalking.com/logbook/hill.php?id=19555

In reply to GarethSL:

That makes sense

In reply to jezb1:

Yeah, I've ö on my keyboard as long with å and ä and they were there when I sent it in to UKC, but seem to have disappeared since.

In reply to TobyA:

Sorry Toby, my mistake. I don't have a scando keyboard and formatting such things is a mystery to me

In reply to GarethSL:

You're right Gareth. Weirdly it was Jottnar with the dots last time I looked, and certainly for several days after the review was published. The system clearly has a problem with these funny foreign things

In reply to Dan Bailey - UKHillwalking.com:


The decision to run with the Daily Mail's website back end clearly unwise

b

In reply to GarethSL:

I fixed that bug quite a while ago but looks like there's still a few hills/crags in the database with the error. I've just updated that hill and fixed it.

In reply to Paul Phillips - UKC and UKH:

Ta.

In reply to jezb1:

Thanks Jez, there was a strange bug that had stripped out a lot of the special HTML characters so some apostrophes, non-breaking spaces and the ö in Jöttnar had been removed.

It should be fixed now if you refresh the page.

In reply to Dan Bailey - UKHillwalking.com:


That is odd because I also thought that there were no problems when I first read the review a week or so ago. Ghost in the machine?

In reply to Paul Phillips - UKC and UKH:

Magic! The ös are back! Cheers Paul.