The North Face Sedition II Stretch Jacket

It's okay.

This is a skiing shell; I don't think any other use is really appropriate. It is a warm piece (with a thin layer of what I think is microfleece), it has an interior snow skirt, and it has a Recco reflector. It has a good selection of pockets -- two side pockets, plus a sleeve pocket, zip up interior pocket on the left, and outside left chest pocket.

However, it's a very heavy garment; if you are using it for anything but lift skiing, you are probably going to come to feel resentful about its weight.

Yet even if you can overlook the weight issue, it had some unfortunate quirks for lift skiing.

1) I only began skiing with a helmet this year (I had to get them for the kids, they were on sale at EMS, I'd heard a radio report about a couple of terrible ski accidents at Whiteface...), and the hood for this jacket (bought only two or three years ago, after helmet use was widespread) simply did not accommodate the helmet; I certainly missed using my hood while I was on the lift with 15-20 MPH winds whipping away at me.

2) It's cut too slim. While a warm piece, it is certainly not warm enough to keep you warm in single digit F temps with only a base-layer and light mid-layer, which is what it accommodates easily. It needed to be cut to accommodate a real insulation layer (down, fleece -- whatever).

Lastly -- I am not convinced it is as waterproof as it should be. In one wet snowstorm (temp = 30F), I think some moisture got through in the shoulder seams. And there was a fair amount of "smearing" on the shoulder and upper chest where I would have expected the DWR to make all the wet stuff roll off. I have to use it in wet conditions a bit more to verify this, though.