One it’s own this review is probably the most pointless, A review of a Buffalo hood – who’d purchase a hood with no jacket? It’s a strange one, why sell a hood on it’s own, why not sell it with a jacket. Just because you can take the hood off and attach it to what I expect is any Buffalo jacket, should you sell a jacket without a hood?
Well that’s what they do, so that’s the way it is.
How did it perform?
The first outing of my gear was up Ben Chonzie at the start of Feb. Ben Chonzie is a short and pretty simple hill and great for winter hikes. It was my location for my first winter walk as I regard it as a ‘safe’ hill for winter. NOTE: no hill is safe if the weather is bad – but if you wish to do a munro then you are highly unlikely to fall off a cliff if you hike up Ben Chonzie.
Weather
The weather played an important part of the review for giving it a reasonable test on it’s first outing. Below is what I was expecting and it was pretty accurate. The walk lasted 6 hours, starting at 9am and finishing not long after 3pm.
So it was wet, followed by more rain and a freezing strong wind. Not perhaps the sternest test for gear but still a good one. The wind was steady and strong with rain driving at you on the way back from the summit.
The Hood
Such a simple design, and although it’s fairly steep in price when you look at all that it is – say in comparison to the jacket. The hood is surprising effective and simple.
It fits simply onto the jacket using Velcro (lets hope it’s long lasting Velcro), it also has a small face covering that attaches with Velcro. I didn’t have a need to use it on this hike, but on a windy day with driving snow it will come into it’s own.
As it’s a Velcro attachment, it’s a very easy process that doesn’t need to be exact in order to attach. Which is very much required when you can’t really feel precise details. Once attached you’ll find that your head is super snug and the rain and wind are of no issue. As mentioned I actually didn’t bother with the face mask portion as it wasn’t cold enough.
Rain
It was raining for at least half of the walk and certainly from around 700m up. The gloves at the end were super wet (read review here on them). But the hood on the other hand didn’t have any issues. It kept my head very dry an comfortable the whole time.
It didn’t stop or muffle sounds, or create it’s own by flapping around and the wind didn’t penetrate it and overall I was pleased with how it performed. Does what you’d expect!
Attaching
In order to use the hood, you have to connect it using the Velcro attachments. While this initially felt like a hassle, it wasn’t really too bad. The wind at no point pulled any part of the Velcro attachments off, as well as that the relatively rigid nature stopped it from blowing in and out. What’s more visibility was great out of it, not impeded by the sides. Should the need arise I’m quite sure if I had to wear some goggles with it, then they’d have fitted in just fine.
Room for improvement?
Yes, a very minor point – I’m sure anyone that has one of these hoods and has tried to put on the little mask in windy conditions with gloves on will say that there is a huge risk of it flying away in the wind. It’s small enough that unless you are using your actual fingers you will potentially have difficultly with it. You could put it on and due to it’s size miss some of the Velcro and let go of it – thinking it’s safe, then it will be gone in a flash.
Only time will tell if this is an issue, but having it permanently attached and lifetable into place I’m sure would have been good.
Score
9 out of 10
So yeah I was impressed with it! 😎
Other Gear
