First Impressions: Salomon Scream Jacket
Jacket arrived this afternoon. I went with the Large size.
Seems like a high quality coat. 3 layer GTX XCR, fully seam taped, nice high collar, well thought out powder skirt. The hood is nice but too small to wear over a helmet, but at least it is removable instead of just stowable. Material and construction overall seem pretty bomber and durable, this coat is heavy for a simple ski shell, but I'd rather have a heavy coat than a shredded coat after 3 days of skiing eastern trees.
The vents are interestingly placed and kinda small, so I'm guessing they won't be quite as effective as normal pit zips. They wrap from near the outside of you lower sternum to about the outside bottom of your ribcage, in case you were wondering. Hand pockets have waterproof zippers but the main zipper and vent zippers aren't waterproof, however they are both well covered by flaps and overhanging hoods.
One last thing about sizing, I'm pretty small (5'8'' 140-145lbs) and I went with a large because I generally like stuff to fit loose on me. Whoever says Salomon sized their stuff similarly to Arcteryx has not tried the two on side by side. My Arc softshell (also a Large) fits me well, but is on the extreme small side of well, as in, if I gain 10 lbs or grow 2 inches, I'll be selling it. This jacket however, is quite different. The large on me is firmly qualified as steezy to super-steezy on the fit charts. I like it, but for other people thinking of buying stuff, Salomon and Arc are not that much a like in fit, with Salomon running bigger.
I can't wait to try this coat out, it seems like it will be perfect for what I wanted it to be, a burly storm shell. Now I just need to find some Arcteryx Minuteman Bibs on sale....
