A super lightweight rain jacket that exceeds the UTMB standard
Worn/tested by: Roger Burlinson
Duration: Worn periodically over a year in training
Worn for: Wet weather protection
Price: £170 (UK stores) – bought from Castleberg Outdoors
Review by Roger Burlinson
Introduction
It’s usually a sign of a great product if you buy it more than once and in the case of the Ultra Jacket from Ultimate Direction, I didn’t hesitate when I needed to replace my old one shortly before a winter ultra.
I’d owned, relied upon and loved my first Ultra Jacket since 2017. It was the lightest rain jacket I’d ever come across and it served me brilliantly for nearly a decade. OK, so when things really turned sour out on the trail, it wasn’t as capable as my Gore Pro Shell jacket, but that was more than double the packed bulk and twice as heavy!
So when Hurwood 50k was approaching and I felt that I probably ought to get a new Jacket, as this event was in December in the UK and the chances were that conditions would be a little nasty, I went straight to back to Ultimate Direction, via UK retailer Castleberg Outdoors.
To my delight, they had a newer updated version of my original jacket, so I dived straight in without hesitation. OK, so the colour and styling, with a two tone scheme, wasn’t exactly what I would have wanted but hey, you have to go with function over form right, when it comes to outdoor gear!
Things started to go a little sour though, when the jacket arrived. Out of the bag, it looked as capable and it was as light as my original one, although the material this time had more of a matt finish than the silky sheen of my original jacket but that was OK. It was when I put it on that I panicked!
I’d ordered exactly the same size as before but this one swamped me. It was like I’d jumped from a medium to an XL! I had to check the order and then the label inside the jacket itself but nope, the medium I’d ordered would have fitted an elephant!
In a mild panic, as the ultra was a little over a week away, I jumped online and ordered a small, then prepared the other to go back. When it arrived, I eagerly tried it on, thinking, hoping, it would fit like my beloved original. This time, although it was smaller than the medium and fitted well enough for me to feel OK about using it, it was still significantly larger and roomier than the previous iteration.
Now Ultimate Direction is a US brand and we all know about the reputation of American waistlines but this is a $200 (full price) high performance rain jacket for trail and ultra runners, so you’d think that oversizing wouldn’t come into it but, for some reason, UD have decided that what was previously a medium size should now be a large to XL size and that small, really means ‘relaxed’ medium.
Still bemused at why a manufacturer of apparel for people who are, almost by design, on the lighter side given what they do, would oversize their garment when the time came to update it, I made a strategic decision. I trusted the Ultra Jacket on the waterproofing front and also, it was a really well made and well designed jacket.
I needed something to trust for Hurtwood, so I decided I was going to bite the bullet and keep it. OK, so the fit was generous but it would still give me the protection I needed and I’d be able to rely on it and I’m happy to say that my faith in the jacket has been rewarded whenever I’ve had to call on it in the rain. But sadly, on a practical level, that’s as far as it’s gone for me.
For Hurtwood itself, I wore my original Ultra Jacket and had the new one in my pack as a back up in case the conditions got really sour. Despite the storm around us, the rainfall was manageable and so I never felt the need to take that extra step and put on the new coat, so it stayed in my pack for the duration.
So why include it in Sport Walk Recommends you ask? Well, while I’ve found it to be unnecessarily roomy and oversized, I’m aware that I am an ectomorph – I’m tall, long and thin. Scrawny is probably a word that might be used to describe me by others but I prefer ‘functionally slight’.
There are three key body types and I’m the one with the least meat on them, so others may very well fit this jacket better than I do and there really is a lot to recommend it, it’s just that you need to make a few allowances for size inaccuracy.
If you do fit this jacket, you may still become infuriated by one design detail in particular that we’ll come to in a moment but that’s easily fixed with a pair of scissors! Overall though, the jacket will serve you well and offer, in my short experience, excellent waterproofing protection, which is after all, they key characteristic we look for in a rain jacket.
The issue of fit is more than just aesthetic though. You want a good slim fitting jacket so that your vest or backpack sits comfortably over the top and doesn’t bunch up under the arms or around the body, as this can cause chaffing and discomfort. It’s also important that your vest slips on and off as easily as possible. If you have fabric bunching up because there’s excessive volume, it can catch on your vest and complicate things and if there’s one thing you don’t want in a challenge situation, it’s complications!
The hood
The hood design in particular is superb, possibly one of the best I’ve experienced (below left), although again, because of the oversizing, I had to pull the bungee as tight as possible at the back to keep it locked to my head and this gave me a bungee ponytail (‘bungeetail’) sticking out of the back of the hood (below right). Perhaps my head is scrawny as well as my body? Maybe others have more ‘head fat’ than I do? I dunno. All I do know is that I can get the hood to fit snugly but it means pulling all the cords to their limit.
Anyway, I don’t want my cranial conundrums to stand in the way of a good hood getting credit for being just that! The shape and design is pretty similar to the previous hood, which was as good as the rest of the jacket. The main difference this time is that there’s more going on with the side walls of the hood (if that’s what they’re called), so the end result is that the connection between the shoulder and the hood peak feels super reliable and it encloses your head really nicely providing excellent protection.
It’s a little difficult to describe it exactly because there’s not a huge amount of difference between the old and new hoods but the new one’s peak feels like it sticks out more and the overall hood shape feels a little like a flysheet covering a tent door, whereas the previous hood felt a little more like a baseball cap with a Lawrence of Arabia shade.
The upside of the ‘tent door’ design (UD call it ‘Tunnel Effect™’) with the new hood is that it feels really solid in wind. When you tighten the bungees, the hood locks down to the shoulders and that makes if really robust. This is because the outside of the hood peak has a stiff cord inside that’s connected back to the base of the hood at the shoulder, while the inside cord, that sits against your forehead loops round to the back for tightening.
Leaving aside the sizing question, this hood really does what you want it to. Because of the large peak, you feel really well protected from the rain and with the various cord tensioners everything stays put in the wind.
Fabric & construction
While the fabric looks essentially the same as the previous model, this time, it has a more matt finish with the grid pattern clearly visible. This jacket is sold on its waterproofing and breathability credentials and they don’t disappoint.
Ultimate Direction claim it has “a 20,000g/m2/24hr moisture vapor transmission rate and 30,000mm water entry pressure”, making it exceed the requirements of compulsory equipment for Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc – the benchmark for all lightweight ultra gear.
When you first wear the jacket it does feel a bit more like a wind cheater than a waterproof and that can be a little disconcerting, especially given that you really need it to give you great protection against the rain when you really need it. This illusion is just that though and as soon as you venture out in the rain and see the water beading on the cloth, you realise it’s giving you exactly the protection you need and want.
All the seams are taped and the taping only started to peel off on my old jacket after nine years and several washes. It’s likely the tumble drying, which is necessary to seal the reproofing, contributed to the seams coming free but by this point the jacket had already delivered on its life expectancy and the construction itself was still as good as new, so I’m not so worried about that. How these new seams stand up compared to the old ones remains to be seen but I have no reason to expect they’ll give me any less service.
Design Features
There’s no getting away from the fact that the design munchkins at UD have really thought about the needs of an imperilled ultra athlete needing protection from moisture outside and in. It’s all very well keeping the rain out but if there isn’t any way for heat to escape, you may as well take the jacket off and accept your fate.
There’s good venting in all the right places, so there’s vents under the arm pits and also a vent on the back of the hood, so that the ‘Tunnel Effect™’ draws air in from the front and then lets it escape at the back, keeping your most important piece of equipment nice and cool.
There’s a BUT coming…
!There is one design choice though, which jeopardises all the slack cut from the oversizing problem. For reasons best know to themselves, UD have taken the little ‘finger garage’ from the previous jacket and turned it into a full blown integrated glove/mitt attached to the wrist cuff and, quite honestly, it’s infuriating!
Firstly, they’ve decided that you need an over-glove, even if you don’t feel that you need one yourself. As if that isn’t bad enough, they’ve actually stitched it to the cuff, it’s not detachable. So you either accept their ultimatum – “you need a glove even if you don’t” – or you send the jacket back with a passive aggressive note saying “I’ll decide when I put a glove on thank you very much”.
So why do it? Well, it seems like there’s an increasing trend where brands or their designers, perhaps feeling the need to ‘add value’ or differentiate themselves from the competition, add features that no-one really asked for. I’ve encountered this with a great many outdoors brands, so it’s not unique to Ultimate Direction.
The problem with these mitts in particular and it was also an issue with the ‘finger garage’ on the previous jacket, is that as you walk along, water runs down your arms and then gathers inside the mitt, giving you wet and cold fingers.
The first time I tried the ‘finger garage’ on the old jacket I thought “ooh, that’s useful” (it was a small pouch attached to the cuff, that you could put your fingers inside if it was raining or cold) but it didn’t take long for the water to build up and that was the end of that. In comparison to the new mitts, this was quite an unobtrusive feature that could be easily tucked away inside the cuff and forgotten about if you didn’t use it, which is what I did.
With this new jacket though, they’ve gone for a full hand mitt with waterproof fabric to match the jacket on the outside and a mesh on the inside, presumably to aid breathability. For the moment, let’s set aside the question of enforced glove usage and concentrate on the functionality.
Sadly, the issue I experienced with the ‘finger garage’ on the previous jacket is still an issue on the new one – the water still runs down your arms and into your mitts.
The bigger issue though is the size and fit of the mitts themselves, just as it is the jacket overall. If you have huge hands then maybe they might just work for you, if you’re not worried about the water ingress but if you have narrow or normal hands, you’re likely to find these mitts are much longer than your actual hands.
When I put mine on, my fingers didn’t even reach the end of the mesh, let alone the tip of the glove, so the bottom part just hangs there, flapping around. It makes doing anything functional with the mitts on almost impossible and so I just end up pushing them back under the sleeves in frustration.
But there’s the second issue. Such are the size of the mitts that they don’t just disappear inside your sleeves like the ‘finger garage’ did, it feels like you’ve stuffed a small t-shirt up your sleeve! Maybe that’s why the volume of the sleeves is also so large, like the rest of the jacket, to accommodate the giant’s gloves? Whatever the reason, all the extra material around your cuff swallows your watch making it harder to read. So that’s another tick on the ‘what’s not so great’ column.
It’s not just the functional aspect of the mitts while you’re wearing your jacket, when you put it on, it’s like putting on a child’s coat where you have those mittens attached to each other by a long cord that’s threaded down the sleeves to prevent you dropping them.
You’re walking along, focused on your Sport Walking or running and it starts to rain. You reach for your rain jacket and go to put it on but instead of being able to quickly slip your arm into each sleeve and then do the jacket up to protect you, you end up getting your hands caught in the mitts and then have to faff around trying to get the mitts out of the way so your hands are free to do the zip up.
It’s such a nonsensical idea to fix mitts to the sleeves of a rain jacket, it’s hard to understand why they did it. If you want to offer the wearer extra protection, why not add removable mitts? At least give the people who are going to buy your product a choice?
In my experience, multi-tasking products seldom excel at all the things they’re trying to cover and so it is with this jacket. If UD had simply made this jacket in an accurate size (as they did on their previous model) and without the mitts, this would be an almost unbeatable product. But by trying to make it both a jacket and a glove, they nearly made it an unusable product or at least a product you could use but choose not to because it’s such a faff.
If it’s raining my hands get wet, that’s what exposed flesh does. I’ve never found wet hands to be a problem out on the trail but if I want to cover them, I put on some lightweight gloves that I have stashed away. If I want to keep those gloves dry, I can easily add an over mitt, which I also have stashed or I could put the over mitt straight onto my uncovered hands. You see, it’s not really that difficult to provide for your needs in respect of hand comfort but the important thing is that you get to decide what you need and how to cater for different situations.
When a brand takes away that versatility, they’re on dodgy ground because it speaks to their overall attitude. It looks like they’re saying “we know what’s best for you” but in taking that line there’s a 50/50 chance at least, that you’ll reply “no you don’t, goodbye”. I know for me, I won’t be buying another jacket from Ultimate Direction because of this experience.
Summary
As I said earlier, despite my criticisms, it doesn’t mean that we can’t recommend this jacket to others. It’s all a question of body shape and size because the attached mitts are easily sorted with a sharp pair of scissors! If you feel, like me, that these mitts are unnecessary, then just cut them off, as I’ll be doing. If you’re not that bothered by them, then leave them and tuck them into your sleeves.
Despite my annoyance with the size and the compulsory mitts, this remains a very competent super lightweight waterproof jacket that should deliver great protection out on the trail. At the end of the day, it’s the waterproofing capabilities of a jacket like this that really counts and that’s why, despite everything, we still recommend it.
It may not be perfect and they may have made some dubious design decisions but in terms of the core thing this jacket gives you – protection agains the rain – from my experience, it really excels.
Sport Walk Recommends grade: 6/10