Berghaus Reversa Jacket – Performance

The new Reversa is the technological descendant of the original ultra-lightweight HyperTherm which pioneered the reversible concept and was aimed at ultra-runners. In essence, the Reversa is a mountain jacket, which works in the same way.

One side of the jacket is pretty much windproof and seamless, so the synthetic filling is protected from the wind and provides maximum warmth. While the other, cooler side, is more permeable and allows heated air to escape more quickly, particularly in windy conditions.

Snow-flake Labelling

The easiest way to tell the two sides apart, is by the quilting pattern on the more breathable fabric, but there’s also a small label showing a snowflake on the cool side and something which we think is either a small flame or a tadpole on the other…

Worn the ‘normal’ way round, the Reversa is a sleek-fitting, lightly-insulated, small-packing, conventional insulated jacket complete with hand-pockets and a neat, close-fitting hood. It’s as good as anything else we’ve used in the category and ideal for short stops, pottering about the campsite and general outdoor use. The windproof fabric shrugs off light showers and is pretty much windproof.

All Change!

Whip the jacket off and turn it inside out so that the quilted surface is on the outside and the difference is marked. The jacket’s still windproof, but because the insulation is now more exposed to air currents, it doesn’t hold air and it feels markedly less warm. More like a simple windproof in fact.

In practice that means you can, for example, use it that way out on the move and then, when you stop and start to cool down, simply reverse the jacket for extra warmth. The effect’s actually more marked than with the first HyperTherm because the breathable fabric side is more air permeable.

On one cold early winter day we wore it in cooler mode on the climb up onto Kinder than, once we were on the flat, lower-output plateau, switched into warmer mode. Neat stuff.

Pockets

One thing we missed was having pockets when the jacket was in doing the cooling thing. The hand-pockets live on the windproof, warmer side of things. And while we understand why, we still missed them. And woe betide you if you stow something in a pocket and then reverse the jacket…

And there’s no phone-friendly chest pocket at all, on either side.