How to Choose Hiking Rain Gear & Stay Dry When Hiking

Video Transcript

"Hi, I’m Kate I’m here with Zoar Outdoor on behalf of Expert Village and we’re going to talk about hiking today. We’re going to be talking about rain gear, this is the most essential piece of equipment you should bring on every hike whether it’s 2 hours or 10 hours. There’s always a chance of rain. When I go out I like to have straight up rain pants, these aren’t breathable but they’re waterproof. So you can expect to be pretty good to go for at least 10 hours. The other option is of course Gore-Tex, these things are waterproof breathable but because they’re breathable they won’t be waterproof for 10 hours, they’ll be pretty water proof and then damp for the next 5 hours. So pants are the most important part and most people forget them because you just think about a raincoat but you want to have pants, keep yourself dry and keep yourself happy. You want to have a raincoat, the raincoat should have a hood, mine has a nice brim on it. If you don’t have a nice brim to keep the rain out of your eyes, you can also wear a hat, this works well under your hood. Raincoats are optional, you can wear ponchos, they’re not really good at high elevations they’ll be flapping around everywhere but it’s also an option, anything to keep yourself dry. If you are going out hiking and you know it’s raining, you’re probably going to want to wear gaiters anyways. Your boots are going to get wet and hopefully they’re waterproof but gaiters are going to prevent anything from supping down in the top layers of boots when you walk through the puddles and you walk through the mud. Lastly you’re going to have a backpack and everything inside that backpack, whether it says its waterproof or not has a chance of getting wet, so you should really consider bringing a pack cover that is waterproof, that as soon as it starts raining you can just throw it on your backpack and most of your gear will stay dry, it’ll be hard to get to your gear but it will be dry and that’s pretty important when you’re hiking, whether it’s a long day, multiple days or 2 hours, this is really important to do that."