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Travel-Cold

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What can you wear that will keep you dry, block wind, provide warmth, and allow you plenty of flexibility? The answer? Soft Shells. The latest craze in outerwear that promises to answer the problems that skiers, snowshoers, runners and other winter or otherwise cold weather sports enthusiasts have complained about since winter sporting was invented.

Traditionally, an outer shell is made of tough nylon that has a waterproof membrane laminated to it to add many of the qualities desired by winter athletes. However, the nylon restricted flexibility and the waterproof membrane caused excessive sweating and a lack of water vapor release from the garment.

So what is a Soft Shell? Well, most Soft Shells are a mixture of fabric technologies. The core of the fabric is typically a soft, warm, wind resistant polyester fleece that retains body heat well, yet has exceptional breathability. The manufacturer then coates the fleece with DWR© (Durable Water Restistant). DWR makes the garment very water resistant and the garment can endure multiple washings and still retain its water resistancy. Finally, many manufacturers will also laminate a WindStopper© membrane to the fabric to eliminate the penetration of wind through the garment. Windstopper© completely blocks wind, yet it still allows the garment to breathe.

Soft Shells are great for most any winter sport, especially high endurance sports. The only thing to worry about is the fact that that they are not completely waterproof. If you are going to be exposed to wet conditions for an extended period of time, water will start to soak through you soft shell.

I get asked all of the time: "How much good do sock liners or glove liners actually do?" While the results can vary from person to person, liners are a great way to add warmth and keep your skin dry.

Polypropylene Sock Liners

Your feet have more than 250,000 sweat glands. Just one foot is capable of sweating 1 pint in a single day. So, when you are out on the ski slopes or hiking up a mountain, your feet can get wet with sweat pretty quick. Polypropylene sock liners will pull the sweat off of your skin allowing your feet to stay much dryer than with regular socks. The liner can also aid in preventing blisters as the liner takes the beating instead of your skin.

Polypropylene Glove Liners

Your hands are capable of sweating as much as your feet. Wearing a glove liner will produce the same benefits as we just discussed with the sock liners. There are some added benefits when using them in the snow. As you take your gloves off and put them back during skiing, snowboarding and other winter sports, your hands can likely get wet and sometime snow can even get inside your gloves or boots. Once again, the polypropylene will keep your skin dry and warm even though the inside of your gloves may be wet. It's worth checking out the thermolite glove liners as well.

If you find yourself asking this question each year shortly after daylight savings time kicks in, then you need to pay close attention. There is no need to freeze when the weather turns cold. The proper clothing and proper clothing layers can eliminate any discomfort that winter typically causes. When I say proper clothing, I'm refering to the design of the clothing as well as the materials used to make it. For proper clothing layers, you can read my Layering Guide for a complete description of proper clothing layer techniques.

So, lets talk about proper clothing. What will keep you the warmest? There are two factors to consider here. First, you want a material that has a very low heat transfer. This means that the material stay warm longer once it is heated by your body. Second, you want a fabric that will trap as much air inside of it as possible. Air is a perfect insulator. So the more of it that is trapped inside a fabric, the warmer it will be. Fleece fabrics have excellent insulating properties because they trap heat in between all of the fluffy fibers. One fabric out there that maximized both of these insulating properties is called polypropylene fleece. Polypropylene has the lowest thermal conductivity of any clothing fabric produced. Because of this, the fleece version of polypropylene retains more warmth than almost anything else you'll find. There are plenty of other similar fabrics. Polyester fleece is probably the second best insulator. Polyester also has a low thermal conductivity. There is an added bonus to polypropylene and polyester fleece clothing. They both retain warmth when wet. So, if you start to sweat a little, you will not get cold like you would with a cotton fabric.

So, stop freezing your way through the winter. Proper dress means starting with the right long johns and then utilizing the proper clothing layers.

I've had many people ask me what the difference is between polypropylene fabric and polyester fabric used to make thermal underwear. In this post, I'll point out ony the factors that I think are the most relevant.

First of all, polypropylene and polyester are synthetic materials. They are both polymers, which is essentially plastic. As a result their colors won't fade or bleed when washed because the colors are built into the material. Polypropylene however, is more hydrophobic than polyester meaning that it does not absorb as much water. Since the water cannot be absorbed into the fabric, the water(or sweat) has a tendancy to spread evenly throughout the garment which in turn helps the water to evaporate much quicker than a fabric that absorbs and retains the water. As a quick example, if you cup your hand and put some water in it and continue to hold the water in your hand with your hand still in a cup shape, the water will take a very long time to dry. But, if you uncup your hand and use your other hand to spread the water evenly all over both of your hands, the water will dry in less than 1 tenth of the time.

So, having explained this, polypropylene will dry much faster than polyester. Polypropylene has a much lower melting point than polyester so you will want to avoid washing polypro in hot water or drying it. For this reason, polyester materials are much easier to care for than polypropylene. Polyester is also more UV resistant than polypro. If you wear polypropylene as an outer layer exposed to the sun, eventually the polypropylene fabric will break down and the color will fade. Polypropylene has a lower heat transfer rate which means that thermal underwear made from polypro will retain more heat than polyester.

So really, whether one fabric is better than the other really depends on what it will be used for. If you just need a fabric to wear next to your skin that will dry very quickly and thus keep you skin dry, then polypropylene is probably what you want. If you want just a good all around fabric that also dries quickly, but is very easy to launder and care for, then polyester is probably your best bet.

OuterSports is giving away a free set of Thermal Underwear every Friday. All you have to do is visit www.outersports.com/contact-us/ and sign up. No purchase is neccessary. Signing up will also subscribe you to OuterSports' newsletter and as long as you are subscribed, you are eligible to win each week. You can also see a list of the winners on the entry page. Good Luck!

Fox River has recently announced a new addition to their sock lineup. Their "Good Earth Collection" is made of 100% renewable resources and unlike other synthetic fibers, it does not use petroleum. Instead, making the Ingeo fiber involves a process of extracting sugars or corn starch from corn, which is then transformed into a polymer(plastic). The result is a hi performance product that is totally environment friendly. Fox River's testing of the new line of socks revealed that wearers preferred the comfort of the Good Earth socks over other synthetic socks.

The Good Earth Collection of socks range in styles from Athletic, to Casual, to Outdoor. If you support the movement to make more clean earth friendly products, you'll want to try Fox Rivers newest line of socks. Fox River is also a member of "One Percent For The Planet," which is an organization that donates 1% of their sales to environmental organizations worldwide.

Last winter, I planned a snowmobiling trip to Utah. Now, I'm a native a Florida and I now live in South Georgia so, the thought of winter time in a place like Utah used to send chills all through me. I've watched most of Warren Millers ski videos. They depict these hardcore skiers taking choppers to the very tops of mountains to ski down. But, one thing you never get from those videos is any inclination as to just how cold it gets at those elevations. Even on the close up shots, you don't see any hint of shivering or coldness. In fact, on some of the interviews at the bottom the are actually sweating. The first time I visited the mountains as an adult was in the summer time. I hiked to the top of mountain that was just over 12,000 ft. Since it was summer time, I didn't bother to bring anything warm. That day just happened to be cloudy and I froze. In the middle of summer! So, how do these skiers keep warm in the winter time? They use a clothing system called layering. The most important being the base layer. If you wear the proper base layer in any weather condition, you dramatically increase your comfort level. Particularly in cold weather. You can read more on layering here.

Now, what happens each year is that more and more people catch on to this layering system. But, they don't prepare in time. Often, a trip gets planned somewhat spontaneously, and at the last minute, they find themselves running from store to store to find the right thermals. The problem is that each winter, outdoor retailers stock their shelves with a limited amount of thermal underwear. They usually base their stock on how much they sold the year before. They might stock a little more if the predictions are for a longer, colder winter. But, either way, they only stock so much. Not to mention how many of each size gets stocked. So, the would be toasty recreationist ends up compromising their layering system with something inferior. Instead of a nice fitting, warm, base layer, a 100% cotton gym sweat suit is substituted and the misery on the mountain begins. The point I'm trying to make here is that if you are serious about staying warm this winter, you need to get the right thermals well before your trip. Don't wait until everything that you would prefer to wear is sold out and you stuck "substituting."

For those of you not satisfied with the current products on the market designed to keep your eyewear on your face or around you neck, there is a better product. It is a new line of eyewear that has the "granny-chain" built in. Ron Lando, founder and CEO of Clic says goodbye to lost eyewear with his ingenious new invention. The earpieces of Clic goggles and sunglasses continue around the back of the head and are seamlessly connected. You see, to remove them, you simply unclick the eye pieces just above your nose to remove them. The picture here speaks for itself. So how do they stay together? Two high strength magnets hold the bridge of the sunglasses or goggles together. Unclick them, lower them and click them back together to allow them to dangle around your neck. Clic eyewear has been around since 2000 and since then has added a number of new products to their line including Clic Readers, reading glasses with the same clic technology.