The North Face Summit Series L6 – Performance

There’s no getting away from the fact that at a measured 1140g for a medium, the L6 is seriously weighty for a jacket, but the two things you need to know are that it’s insanely warm. And very thoroughly engineered.

Cards on the table: so far the L6 has brushed off the coldest conditions the UK winter has to offer without batting a down-filled eyelid. Using it in British conditions is like taking a Formula One car to a go-kart track.

Nope, even though it’s not temperature rated, the jacket is intended for seriously sub-zero climes. High altitude peaks in the Himalaya. The Alps in deep winter. The high Andes. Alaska. And the polar regions, are its natural habitat.

Anywhere that you might want to wear something that essentially feels like a sleeping bag disguised as a down jacket. Not that pure infernal warmth is all the L6 has in its locker, far from it.

It’s seriously put together using the best technology a massive corporation like The North Face can sources. The Z-baffled construction uses welded seams to eliminate stitching and minimise cold-spots for example.

And the tough-feeling micro-gridded outer fabric also utilises TNF’s FuseForm technology to increase abrasion resistance in important areas. The darker green panels aren’t separate, they’re part of the same piece of fabric as the lighter ones, they’re woven differently for added toughness. Clever huh?

The hood is a serous piece of insulation too. First the collar is very high, so even when the main hood isn’t deployed, you get a high level of neck and chin protection. The actual hood is heavily insulated and sized to fit easily over a climbing helmet, while still allowing a bunch of facial protection. Ideal for expedition belay jacket use.

It works without a helmet too. Loads of coverage for your face with just a slot to see through. It’s like being enveloped in warmth.

And then there’s the detailing. There are loads of neat touches: remote hem adjusters with the pull-cord housed in the hand-warmer pockets. Chest pockets with a secondary internal zip which, in turn, means you can access the contents of two internal stretch mesh stash pockets without undoing the main-zip and wasting previous heat.

Easy-grip zip-pulls which work fine with gloves, because you will be wearing gloves with this jacket. And even an emergency fluoro orange pennant with reflective logo which sits in the lefthand chest-pocket just in case you need to be spotted more easily.

If there’s one thing we’d maybe query, it’s the integrated Lycra thumb-loop cuff construction. It works fine with lighter gloves and shorter-cuffed  ones like, say, the MHW Hydra Pro, but we found it struggled a little with gauntlet-style gloves. To be fair, the obvious solution, would simply be to remove the inner, thumb-looped cuff if it doesn’t work for you.