Materials and Construction

The Summit Series Pumori jacket and bib pants are made from 3-Layer GORE-TEX Pro, the fabric maker’s most high-performance material. Strong, extremely breathable and highly waterproof, this material is designed to keep you dry no matter how much you’re sweating as you break trail through powder, or kick steps into an icy slope.

While it’s not as eco-friendly as their new ePE material, GORE-TEX Pro is made from recycled nylon, helping lessen its impact on the planet. There are neat little construction touches here too, including cutting the jacket so that there are no seams on the shoulders, which helps remove a potential source of friction and rubbing from backpack straps. In terms of design, it’s all about keeping the weight to a minimum here. The jacket weighs only 490g, and packs down super small.

“If you’re likely to be spending more time off-piste than on, or if your backpack standardly includes an ice axe and crampons, the Summit Series Pumori is for you”

Fit and Features

The emphasis on weight saving means there are fewer features here than you might expect to find on a standard high-end ski jacket. There’s no powder skirt, for starters, and they’ve eliminated the lower down pockets you’d find on the Summit Series Verbier jacket—partly to save weight, but also because you wouldn’t be able to access them if you were wearing a harness. There are, however, two internal mesh pockets that are perfect for stashing skins in to keep them warm and sticky when they’re not being used.

Elsewhere everything is as high-tech as you’d expect for the price. There are fully taped seams and waterproof zips, including on the underarm vents, and a full-adjustable helmet compatible hood. The pants are similar, with a single zip pocket, a lightweight belt, and no gaiters to reduce weight.

The commitment to using the lightest materials means the Pumori jacket and bib pants are some of the lightest full GORE-TEX models on the market, and it packs down tiny too. Both huge advantages if you’re doing multi-day ski touring trips and need to stash the jacket in your backpack for lengthy periods. The jacket weighs only 490g, and our tester found the ability to fold it up tiny into a backpack super useful when out on all day backcountry splitboarding missions.

“With its super high tech fabrics and features designed to minimize weight and faff at every turn, this is essentially a mountaineering jacket that can also be used for snowboarding”

Roundup

When it comes to making top of the range kit for high altitude exploring, it’s hard to beat The North Face’s Summit Series. With its super high tech fabrics and features designed to minimize weight and faff at every turn, this is essentially a mountaineering jacket that can also be used for snowboarding.

As that designation suggests, there are things here that would be overkill for riding round the pistes—you just don’t need this level of waterproofing or breathability if you’re going to be spending most of your time cruising blues or meandering between mountain restaurants. But if you’re serious about the backcountry, or thinking of tackling something like the Haute Route, a backcountry camp in Alaska, or even a trip to its namesake range in the Himalayas then you’ll appreciate the obsessive attention to detail that’s gone into the design and materials of the Pumori jacket.

Pros:

• For a jacket that’s this tough, this waterproof and this breathable, the Summit Series Pumori jacket is incredibly lightweight, at less than 500g.

Cons:

• The Pumori jacket and the Pumori bib pants are top of the range in terms of tech, but also in terms of price. They’re definitely an investment, rather than an impulse purchase.