[at-l] Pit Zips---

[Tom McGinnis]

In 1979, I took 5 days "off" in Connecticut to attend a reunion, eat like a horse, buy, repackage, and send drop boxes, and to get my "storm" situation settled. My original GoreTex shell (which SUCKED) had been stolen in Waynesboro, and I'd come north from there with a baseball cap as my rain gear. (Not a hard trick, as many can attest, but not something you want to head into New England sporting, either.)

I spent most of the miles all the way to Hanover in the most perfect GoreTex, pit-zipped parka shell EVER invented. I wore it sometimes from start of day to end, and it would adjust so perfectly, between the throat and the bottom zipping towards each other, and the pit zips truly VENTING my midriff -- I NEVER had to stop because I was sweating. I was identified by the Stratton Pond caretaker as a throughhiker because when, at 7:00am in the morning and me stopping to ask the time, through a tent wall he asked "You going to Maine?" huh was my reply. "Well, you're whistling in the pouring rain. Only throughhikers do that" came the reply. He hadn't even laid eyes on me. At that point, I truly knew I could make it to Maine.

Yeah, pit zips rock. And I still have that shell. Use it regularly. Needs to be sealed. Almost froze me heading over Mt. Rogers overnight in sleet that one year at Trail Days..... 'member that one? Cold.

Nutballtoe

--- On Thu, 11/20/08, KGJ <jplynch at crosslink.net> wrote:

> i use mine.  they're great!
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Leslie Booher" <lbooher at charter.net>
> >I realized the other day that my winter jacket has pit zips.  I know the 
> >theory behind them, but I can't imagine ever really
> using them.  Do any of you actually unzip them to air out your pits?