We’ve been fielding question after question about the new Mountain Hardwear Dry.Q Elite jackets… What the heck is Dry.Q Elite? Does it really breathe as well as they say it does? Will it last as long as my Gore-Tex jacket? These are great questions, and we thought it best to approach Mountain Hardwear directly for some public clarification.
Ted Ganio, Mountain Hardwear’s “VP of Innovation, Technology & Equipment,” was happy to sit down with us for an email interview. Click here for the full article on rockcreek.com; here are a couple of quotes from the interview.
On switching away from Gore-Tex technologies:
“There were so many guardrails in place that our ability to be creative and innovative was completely shut down. Honestly, if you take a look at all the Gore-Tex jackets offered, and you remove the brand logos, you see very quickly a staggering sea of sameness. Every brand, around the world, is creating the same garment out of the same binder of fabrics. It was time to stop the madness. It was time to build garments the way consumers want them.”
On durability and the extensive testing Mountain Hardwear performed on these jackets:
“We subjected Dry.Q Elite fabrics to 500 hours of continuous testing… [it] was conducted by an international 3rd party testing lab. We tested waterproofness, air permeability, and Moisture Vapor Transmission Rates (MVTR) at 5 different intervals: before washing, after 50 hours of washing, 100 hours of washing, 300 hours of washing, and 500 hours of washing. And we tested the MVTR at each interval using 3 different test methods: RET, the upright cup method, and the inverted cup method. We wanted to really understand what the true durability of Dry.Q Elite was and we wanted to be sure we were really bringing a better solution to market.”
Click here to read the entire article; it’s well-worth the read.
Ted also appears in this Mountain Hardwear video about the technology:
The Dry.Q Elite styles include the Mountain Hardwear Drystein Jacket (men’s), the Mountain Hardwear Drystein Jacket (women’s), the Mountain Hardwear Zahra Jacket (women’s), the Mountain Hardwear Kepler Jacket (men’s), the Mountain Hardwear Nazca Jacket (women’s), the Mountain Hardwear Ampato Jacket (men’s), and the Mountain Hardwear Jovian Jacket (men’s).
Ready to shop? Click here to visit rockcreek.com and view our selection of Mountain Hardwear Dry.Q Elite jackets!
Jörg Blauert says
Hello,
I have a question for Drystein.
What the rain leaks in the area of the stretch material under the arms?
Thank you
Jeff Bartlett says
Jörg, while I suppose this is certainly possible if one were climbing (with arms over the head) in a hard rainstorm or the like, or maybe just hiking all day in a torrential rain, I haven’t experienced this nor heard complaints from anyone who has.
Paul says
Recently purchased a dry q jacket , how do you wash this garment
Paul konighaus says
How do you wash dryq garments