All new Adidas winter 2011 collection – including Terrex Active Shell

Gareth    Clothing, General Outdoor     active shell, adidas, goretex, primaloft, terrex, winter 2011

We recently had Jon down from Adidas to guide us through the new Autumn Winter collection 2011. We were rather excited to have him down as this will be the first time we will stock both the Adidas clothing range as well as their footwear. You can tell just how excited I was from this video below!

There were quite a few pieces that really stood out, first the Terrex Primaloft Parka.

It looks like a great belay jacket with some about town practicality. I was particularly impressed with the adjustability of the hood. Coming in at roughly 900g it’s a solid piece and is backed up with Climaproof storm, Adidas’ own waterproof breathable fabric.

Next up was the Terrex Hybrid pant. This is a fully featured mountain trouser with a great combo of Gore Windstoppper for most of the trouser, and Climaproof for the high wear areas. You have built in gaiters, and some nice touches with rubberised elastic bands on the inside of the trousers to help grip & keep the trousers up. At £130 this is great value for such a high spec pair of pants.

This was the one that really got my attention. There has been a great deal of noise recently in respect of new technologies when it comes to waterproof, breathable fabrics. Mountain Hardwear have released their Dry-Q for later this year, Polartec have their Neo Shell and Goretex have released Active Shell. All are competing to be the lightest most breathable waterproof fabric out there.

What was immediately different for me was the feel of the Active Shell jacket. I was expecting a light jacket, but the feel was also subtly different to a hard shell being a little more flexible and not quite as noisy when moving. It also felt great next to my skin. Aside from the feel of the fabric, I really liked the permanent built in venting, the helmet compatible hood and the overall weight at just shy of 370g. I am really looking forward to this coming in so will keep you updated as soon as we get to test it in anger on the hill.

We also had a couple of women’s fleeces in some vibrant colours, Lucy tried them on and the cut got the thumbs up.

Finally we had the Terrex Windstopper soft shell jacket, featuring some cavernous pit zips and a great athletic cut, coming in just under 590g in weight. It looks like a good value shell.

All in all a collection that has got us wishing for snow, short days and long nights again – roll on Winter 2011!

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