First light. First tracks. It’s a manta for those hungry enough to break trail to reach untouched backcountry snow. But with this very specialized love comes the need for a specialized clothing system, one that takes into account the terrain, the uphill push of setting the skin track in snow up to your knees and the rewards of skiing long runs in pure, alpine powder.
For ski touring, you need a lot of breathability while you‘re skinning, but you still need protection from the elements in high mountain settings. Getting wet from the inside can be just as bad as getting wet from the outside, so the breathability of the fabric is key.
Introduced in 2013, the Trailbreaker Pants were designed to meet ski specific needs and be the ultimate lower shell for touring. Before this, according to guide, author and Outdoor Research test team member Martin Volken, “We essentially used alpine climbing soft shell pants for ski touring. They worked OK, but they weren’t designed for ski touring from ground up.“
Looking into what was available on the market at the time, the OR design team saw three main issues that hadn’t been addressed. First, there were no thigh vents in the majority of soft shell pants. Second, there had never been a hybrid fabric technology to address the seemingly contradictory needs of waterproofness and breathability. And third, the fact many people don’t like to use a beacon harness, and prefer to have the beacon in a zippered pocket for comfort and safety.
To address these issues, the Outdoor Research designers added thigh vents on the inside of the thigh and not the outside. Like pit zips on a jacket, these vents are designed to efficiently dump heat. But there’s a big reason for their position: the femoral artery is located in the inner thigh, which allows you to cool (or warm) your body quickly because of the blood-rich vein’s proximity to the skin surface.
Next, the need for waterproof protection in areas most exposed to the snow – below the knees – and the need for breathability everywhere else required a combination of strategically placed fabrics, something Outdoor Research refers to as Hybrid-Mapped Construction. They use a combination of fabrics, each placed where they provide the most benefit. In the case of the Trailbreaker Series, the jacket and pants start with a lightweight stretch double-weave soft shell that’s incredibly breathable. Then the designers add strategically placed waterproof panels in the places most exposed to the elements. These panels keep snow from melting through and wetting out the fabric in key areas like the hood and shoulders of the jacket and lower leg sections on the pants, which gets the most exposed to snow when you’re cutting tracks.
Finally, the addition of a beacon pocket allows backcountry skiers and snowboarders to have their beacons comfortably and securely zipped away, but still close at hand.
Building on the success of the pants, the line expanded to include a jacket in 2014.
“The Trailbreaker Jacket was badly needed,” said Volken. There was a large gap between ultra-light alpine jackets and the rugged soft shells designed for climbing and mountaineering. Volken’s idea was to, “create a bit more weather protection without cutting down on breathability too much.”
The jacket was designed much the same way as the pants: with strategically placed waterproof Pertex® Shield+ fabric where it’s needed in the shoulders and hood, and the rest of the jacket constructed from a more breathable, temperature-regulating double-weave soft shell.
The jacket also includes touring-friendly features like mechanical stretch, a hood closure system that seals out bad weather without limiting peripheral vision – pit zips to dump excess heat, two large internal pockets and articulated elbows.
“I’ve tested several different prototypes of the Trailbreaker Jacket all over the planet over the last couple of years,” says Volken. “The design objective was to make the best overall ski touring pant and jacket combo on the market, and I believe Outdoor Research achieved that goal.”
Check out the 2014 Outdoor Research Trailbreaker series on www.mec.ca.