Gore-tex Pro or Gore-tex Soft Shell?

Question

I'm trying to choose a ski jacket, between North Face "Free Thinker" (Gore-Tex Pro) and North Face "Sedition II" (Gore-Tex Soft shell). I ski mostly in CA and my main concern is breathability. I tend to get wet from the inside rather than for the outside ;-) I understand that Soft Shell would be more breathable than the Gor-Tex Pro shell but it looks like Sedition II (Soft shell Gote-Tex) has a fleece layer and i'm afraid that even though it is more breathable, it is going to keep me more more hoot so i'll end up sweating more. I have had a chance to try Free Thinker with the 200 weight fleece underneath and it kept me relatively warm and dry, compare to my old Spyder jacket, even though when i took the shell off, i could feel some moisture on the inside of the shell.

Appreciate any professional opinion.

Answer 1

softshell

Answer 2

First, I can tell you that Gore-tex "softshell" is a scam.  Basically, it's Gore-tex with a fleece lining.  Is that inherently bad?  No.  It's a fine material.  But it is not a softshell material by anybody's definition.  It breathes only as well as any other Gore-tex material (which is to say much worse than any real softshell material), and it has no stretch, so it must be cut like a hardshell to allow any range-of-motion.  If you sweat in old Gore-tex stuff, you will sweat and wet yourself in Gore-tex "softshell".

What happened was that W.L. Gore was caught flat-footed at the current softshell revolution.  Gore is heavily invested in PTFE membrane technology, and weak in all the other technology that true softshell materials involve, such as stretch-wovens, discontinuous membranes, double-weaves, hydrophobic fibers, etc.  So their marketers came up with Gore-tex "softshell", which they knew would sell on the Gore name alone, and supposedly one-up all the real softshell materials by being waterproof (duh, most of it is regular Gore-tex).  People would miss the fact that the entire point of a softshell is to bias the equation toward BREATHABILITY better than Gore-tex (at the sacrifice of total weather protection).  People would also miss the fact that real softshell materials are stretchy, so that it can be cut to fit closer than a traditional hardshell and still permit motion.  Part of this is so that the clothing looks better on the wearer, but also so that there is less internal air volume, which both keeps you warmer and also allows the clothing to dry out faster if it gets wet.

Again, understand that I'm raining S**t on Gore-tex "softshell" because its name is deceptive advertising, not because the material sucks.  It doesn't suck if you're just looking for a Gore-tex hardshell with a fleece lining.

Gore-tex Pro Shell is supposed to be better, though.  It's supposed to be more breathable than Gore-tex XCR, and is close to eVENT's breathability without that material's durability/contamination issues.

However, neither material is going to be as breathable or motion-permissive as true softshell materials, such as Polartec Power Shield, Schoeller stretch-wovens, Pertex, etc.  The compromise with true softshell materials is that it's more breathable and comfortable 90% of the time, and with enough weather protection for 90% of the time.  However, softshells will fail you at that last extreme 10%, such as a continuous rain downpour (it's water-resistant, but not completely waterproof) or at the top of a 14000ft mountain (it's wind-resistant, but not completely windproof).  This is where "the questions" come in:  will you ski in a rain downpour (hopefully not) or through bitterly-cold gale-force winds (maybe on this one)?  How often?

The real answer to those questions is that a good setup would have both a hardshell and a real softshell (not Gore-tex "softshell") to choose from, depending on how bad the weather will be that day.