Alpkit Katabatic Jacket – Performance

The first thing you notice about the new Katabatic is that the non-shiny, stretchy fabric choice means it feels subjectively ‘nicer’ than traditional, shiny-fabric insulated jackets. Throw in a neat-fitting, athletically trim cut and a muted, contemporary colour choice along with some careful detailing and it has that X-factor thing going on.

It’s also decently warm for a 405g synthetic jacket and packs down into a reasonably compact bundle, though it’s a tight fit in its own pocket so we tended to leave the zip undone rather than force the issue.

Special Powers

The Katabatic’s special power though, is its claim to be wearable  ‘whilst working hard without getting the dreaded ‘boil in the bag’ feeling’ – Alpkit’s words.

The idea, is that more permeable fabrics let the fug out more readily than with traditional, closely woven, shiny windproof ones. So does it work? Our experience is yes, up to a point. For steady use in cold conditions, walking on the flat for example, it’s quite comfortable.

‘We suspect that the insulation simply doesn’t actively move vapour or moisture across it as well as stuff like Polartec Alpha’

It will also tolerate short bursts of hard effort. But when we deliberately smashed ourselves into the red, we overwhelmed it pretty fast getting hot, sweaty and uncomfortable in the process.

What happened then was that the jacket took more than 30 minutes to dry out a damp baselayer on flatter terrain and we felt damp and clammy as a result.

We suspect that the insulation simply doesn’t actively move vapour or moisture across it as well as stuff like Polartec Alpha, so once your baselayer gets damp, for example, there’s no active mechanism to move that moisture outwards.

Hood Flop

The only other issue we had with the jacket, was the hood. It’s a neat, closely-fitting, insulated thing, but because there’s no adjustment, it has a tendency to allow your head to move within it – bad for crossing roads – and occasionally to flop forward over your eye-line.

When you’re stopped that’s not really an issue and it’s also fine under a climbing helmet, but for general walking about use, it’s a little distracting. A simple top adjuster cord would fix both issues at the same time. Our other tweak would be to the hand-pockets which sit under some pack-belts, again fine for static use, less good if you’re moving.

Otherwise, everything’s present and correct. We liked the soft, microfleece pocket linings, the hand hem-cord adjusters are really neat, flat, easy-to-use design and we had no zip-snagging issues. And while it’s a small thing, it’s good to have a phone-friendly chest pocket