If you spend a good amount of time traveling in the winter, you already know that cold weather travels are a different beast. For starters, winter gear is bulky and constantly challenges your commitment to boycotting paying airline fees for baggage, (I’m looking at your, Frontier). With the change in the weather, so too does the amount of space in your travel pack change, and aside from winter boots, the biggest space invader in most pieces of winter luggage is a good puffy jacket. I’m not asking for too much from my ideal go-to winter jacket. It needs to be technical enough to keep me warm during a cold afternoon spent hiking or snowshoeing or fat biking, but fashionable enough to throw on while out on the town. Not too bulky, not so technical it loses it’s aesthetic appeal and takes up half of a suitcase — a jacket that’s just right — which is where Sierra Design’s Women’s Sierra DriDown Jacket comes in.
MSRP: $159.00
Pros: The Women’s Sierra DriDown Jacket is pretty snazzy and sleek for a puffy. It fits in well on the trails paired up with boots and snow pants, and around town over a pair of jeans and a flannel; and the drop tail design keeps your butt warm and dry in both places. This jacket also features 800 fill DriDown technology — a natural down insulation treated with polymer that creates a hydrophobic finish. This enables the jacket to stay drier and warmer in wet weather, and dries faster than regular untreated down, retaining its loft and insulation capability. The exterior of the jacket is made out of shadow rip polyester which helps ward of tears and rips — postponing the sad day when you have to start patching up your puffy — something that is inevitable when you play hard outside. And the crowning feature of this piece of apparel that truly makes it a go-to winter jacket, is the lightweight fabric packs up so small it can be stowed in one of the jacket’s zipper pockets and becomes the size of a book. Perfect for stashing in your pack while de-layering on the trails, and for saving space in your travel pack and continuing to stick it to airlines. It also doesn’t hurt that this jacket rings in under $200.
Cons: I love the athletic fit of the jacket, but I also really like to layer up in the winter, and wish that this jacket was just a tad bit roomier.
Where We Took It: Road tripping around Iceland, on a weekend getaway to Breckenridge, early morning birding in Nebraska.
