Skijacke

Everyone knows that the large Swiss brand with the extinct cousin of the elephant as its emblem is one of the leading manufacturers of mountain sports clothing. It has also been offering clothing specifically for freeriders for over 10 years (i.e. long before the big trend). At the same time, this clothing line is revised and improved every year. We have tested the top models from Mammut for you.

The Mammut Nirvana XCR jacket has been with me for 16 years now. I can't remember exactly, but it can't be much shorter than that. I've been on the other side of the globe with this jacket, on many oceans, hung in it on numerous rock faces and of course it has experienced almost all of the countless properties and aggregate states of snow.

Flylow won the APEX Award from Polartec® in 2013 with the LabCoat. With this technical jacket, the young American label promises guaranteed waterproofness combined with high breathability. Made for all-round use in the mountains, the jacket has a simple design and a high-quality finish.

Although the Mammut Meron Jacket is one of the top models from the current Mammut collection made from Gore-Tex Pro, the jacket is quite simple and lightweight, as there are no frills. Of course, this does not mean that the jacket is not made to a very high standard and also looks quite stylish!

This season, Bergans has launched the Hodlevke jacket and trousers, a new and visually appealing combination with a baggy style for young people, especially for freeriding, but also for ski touring and "normal" skiing. The outfit is made from 3-layer Dermizax™ NX material, which promises particularly high breathability as well as wind and waterproofness.

There are now various, mostly brightly colored clothing lines from a wide range of manufacturers on the market that are specially designed to meet the needs of freeriders. However, the Salomon Quest Motion Fit combination really stands out: special attention was paid to maximum freedom of movement in the cut and material. We have tested for you how the clothing performs in everyday freeriding and ski touring.

Now that's what you call perfect timing! Norrøna is presenting the highlight of its backcountry freestyle line just in time for the first flurries of winter 2013/14: the narvik Gore-Tex 2L jacket. And because Norrøna and PowderGuide are so excited about the first snow, we're also giving away a brand new narvik GTX jacket!

Functional clothing is particularly important when it comes to working out your own turns. Bergans piqued our interest with their Dermizax™ NX combo and we tested it for you.

Mountain guide and photographer Stefan Neuhauser tests the top freeride jacket from the current Bergans collection for PowderGuide. Stephan has been freeriding with the Isogaisa jacket and Stranda pants from Bergans in the Allgäu and Southern French Alps since mid-December 2011 and tested the jacket extensively.

The Veda jacket and Vasaki pants are the latest men's models in Salewa's freeski mountaineering line. As a hardshell, they form the first barrier against the elements such as wind, moisture and other unpleasantness that you encounter in the mountains. The membrane used is Powertex, which is not only waterproof and breathable, but also very stretchy. Both the jacket and trousers have a super-thin layer of fleece on the inside. This is not a real lining, the fleece is attached directly to the 3-layer material and is really very thin (approx. 1 mm). Nevertheless, this makes the jacket and trousers slightly warmer than pure shell clothing. I have been using the jacket and trousers combination for just under a month for skiing and touring.

"La Grave" is the name of the men's model in Ortovox's new hardshell clothing line. We became aware of the jacket because, according to the manufacturer, it combines the function of a three-layer hardshell jacket with the warmth and comfort of merino wool. To find out what the top jacket can really do, we put it to an extensive test in the powder snow of the still young winter of 2010/11.