New for autumn/winter 2021, Rab has unveiled its Rab Generator Alpine Jacket – the brand’s  “warmest, lightest and most packable belay jacket” to date, one that’s designed to “excel when the elements are at their worst”.

It’s an item that should be ideal for Munro ascents in winter or time on the belay ledge, according to the Derbyshire-based outdoor company, and it’s billed as sitting at the “pinnacle” of the brand’s range of synthetic insulated layers.

The Rab Generator Alpine Jacket is insulated with PrimaLoft Cross Core technology, which fuses high performance PrimaLoft fibres with a revolutionary temperature-blocking technology known as Aerogel – a highly porous, lightweight structure originally developed by NASA scientists. Silica Aerogel is composed of more than 95% air and is regarded as the lightest solid material known to man. It’s also deemed to be a highly effective insulator. According to Rab’s marketing team, when this material is fused with PrimaLoft insulation fibres, the “highest level of lightweight warmth, only previously achieved by down, is reached”.

This technology was developed by PrimaLoft engineers, who found a way to integrate the Aerogel material into PrimaLoft’s fibres, allowing the firm to develop apparel insulation that “withstands the extreme challenges of outdoor garments” and “achieves both enhanced warmth and decreased weight” – a Holy Grail like win-win. The technology has been adopted by more than 50 brands, including Maloja, Mammut, Vaude, Dynafit, La Sportiva, Millet, Bergans, Haglöfs, Norröna, Montane, Rab, L.L.Bean, Sitka, Black Diamond, Patagonia and Strafe.

Rab uses a specific version of PrimaLoft Cross Core with 74% post-consumer recycled material (plastic bottles) and this has a distinctive accordion-like construction that supposedly enables “unending loft and quick compression recovery for long-lasting, lightweight warmth”.