From "Insulation: A Fraud of Meaningless Measures"
Section: The High Street is not a Dangerous Place
In winter, I'll see more expensive insulated jackets in one minute on a busy high street than I'll see in a year in the mountains. In terms of the ratio between serious outdoor types (the ones on the peaks) and high street puffers, the worst offender has to be The North Face. I can't remember the last time I saw some TNF apparel in the mountains (perhaps it's just the lonely routes I take, or the fact that it's over-priced and over-hyped).
The outdoor industry needs to decide who its customers are, or at least offer a range that is certified and tested for mountain use. Are they fashion brands offering a "mountain look" for the high street or are they genuine outdoor brands offering something that will prevent death from exposure when it's all gone pear-shaped in the mountains?
These are two very different things. Synthetic insulation, as far as Scramble is concerned is a safety measure (much like crampons, rope or ice axes), to combat the wet and cold. Little in our opinion is more dangerous than the combination (whether in sequence or all at once) of dreich conditions; wet, bitterly cold with high wind chill. I've been closer to serious hypothermia in these conditions than I ever have in dry, double digit sub zero temperatures. In the UK for example, we don't have glamourous towering peaks, we do offer some seriously wet, stormy, bleak, bitiingly cold winter paradises and these conditions are often why people on this cheery island die in the mountains.