Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Alaska rain jacket question

Well there’s “wet” and there’s “less wet” 😁

If you have a warm, dry-ish camp to get back to it’s a little easier.

Any recommendations for these long gloves? Link?

Sounds like a really good idea

Is there a possibility to improve your shelter? Is a lightweight large tipi style tent and stove an option? My old man has a 16 or 18' diameter kifaru tipi with a fold up stove.... it works great as long as wood is available.... really nice to dry out clothes over night and only about 20-30 pounds total...... may not be an option if you're backpacking or maybe you could pre stage it at a known spot???

.
I've tried a lot of different things over the years.
Carhartt heavy duty is the best I've found for construction work.
Heavy shell and proprietary breathable liner.
On a heavy rain day, condensation and sweat will win.
Occasional treatments of NikWax TX.Direct helps the shell shed water before it soaks in.

I have an original Columbia Widgeon that is good but in a drenching rain you'll get damp.
Zip out Thinsulate liner.
The shell needs the NikWax treatment.

Grundens commercial has nice neoprene cuffs but it's rubber raingear which as you know, has its own set of problems.

Hi 'N Dry bootfoot waders are getting popular for cold weather service.
I have not tried them.

It's too bad you can't set up a dry shack (tent).
IME, that is key to having a comfortable day out in the rain.
And extra sets of whatever, in case two days are needed to dry out.

Doubling up on the goretex style jackets works too. Outer layer is the sacrificial layer but the second jacket catches what seeps through the first jacket.

I did it for a season and I had one of my jackets blow out the back of my boat and never replaced it.

Key is to not hike hard in your rain gear if you can help it. If i know I have a 3-5 mile hike into where I want to start hunting i wear a sacrificial top knowing it will be soaked when I reach my destination and then I change out when i get there into my dry stuff. Then at least you get a few hours of hunting before you soak yourself again.

Simms has become horrible to deal with on warranty. The "Lifetime" is the lifetime of the product. Once the fabric is abraded a bit the warranty is gone. We decided in moose camp this year the best part of the Sitka Gear vest is the sleeve seams will not leak!

So, Pilgrim, you wanna be wet warm, or you wanna be wet cold? Them's your choices, in my experience.

Of course, once you stop moving....

Wood is an issue. But we have talked of a propane stove in the big Stone Glacier tents. We can get a propane bottle flown out. Wood is basically wet all the time and just won't happen unless you cut a year in advance and stash in a cabin. If we were in a cabin none of this would matter much lol

You Alaska pros are a special brand of tough. Think of the folks in the old days. Even tougher.
My hat is off to you.
F01

Polar Fleece bag over your sleeping bag works well to wick the moisture out of your sleeping bag. Wake up in the morning and outside of the polar fleece is wet but your bag is dry. A wood stove in a hot tent is a good way to dry your gear, the last couple of years to wet, I just stayed home during hunting season hate being wet for extended times! I tarp everything and keep it dry!

My Alaska tent of choice for non backpacking hunts is the Arctic Oven. I ran parachute cord inside the tent from one pole to the other. Our gear would hang over the cord. No matter how wet we got during the day, running a dual mantle latern or a tiny wood stove inside the tent would dry out our gear by morning.

We are in bomb shelters and Stone Glaciers. I have zero control over this. as noted no wood for wood stove. No lanterns. But I think its really close to us dropping our own coin on propane heater and bottle. We do have propane cook stove. The problem half arises though that the cookstove develops moisture in the tent. Hopefully the stove, I forget the name now, should help. I know they use on the Idiatrod trail so thats a start.

Thats one I've not heard. I keep a bivy bag over my wiggys bag to keep it from getting wet inside the tent from condensation. Maybe thats an issue, but I may grab a fleece liner and try that too. Really the bag being wet isn't an issue most of the time, but the times I had to crawl in with wetter than normal clothing it finally became a problem. Shiver half the night in a zero bag until things dried out. LOL

We are nothing compared... Read trophies won and lost... it is beyond what the folks put up with at times. I cannot imagine and the weights they dealt with on top of it. Everything wool and canvas etc...cast iron pans and so on.

I bought my first Arctic Oven used from Snowwolfe nearly 20 years ago. I still use it, and have since bought a second one new. I don't used them in Alaska Peninsula rain environments, but in winter ice fishing expeditions. I use Nuway propane heater-stoves in them. Cots. It's like sleeping in my bedroom at home, and a 5 gallon propane tank lasts for a few days continually running on low, and with a propane lantern running, too, during awakened hours when in the tent. That's in temps going as low as -30.

There's no way I'd personally haul all that on a Peninsula hunt.........but I'm not a professional guide with access to aircraft support, either, especially if you have multiple clients, one after the other. The Arctic Oven Artika with Nuway stove and a couple/three 5 gallon propane tanks is about as close to a small cabin as you're likely to get for a two week hunt (or more) in that miserable weather. And it will stand up to that wind, too, and maybe even better than a cabin.

Nuway is probably exactly what we are thinking. Gonna have to figure out what size but thats probably a question for them.

Sleep warm (preferably dry as well), take good care of your feet, eat enough calories. Just 3 things.

Most everything follows from there, at least for a time. Constant wet is survivable, just not fun!

One of my Nuways is a single burner, and the other is a double burner. Even in sub-zero temps, the double burner was completely unnecessary in the Arctic Oven 10x10. An Artika being bigger might be different.

The Nuway exhaust vented out the stack in the Arctic Oven makes all the difference over propane radiant heaters. It keeps the interior of the Arctic Oven as dry as the Sahara.

We tried the propane stove in the Arctic Oven the past two years. Short answer, no Bueno! First, it does not do enough to dry anything, even while we were eating a LOT of propane. After the first attempt we were assured we were doing it wrong. So last year we tried again. We are there for about a month. Second go around the propane use was worse, nothing dried, and the tent was cold.

Nothing matches a wood stove for drying a tent and contents. We cut at least a year ahead and stack some in the tent to dry... and we are not in a wet place compared to Kodiak or the peninsula.

Thats interesting . The Idiatarod trail breakers team uses them with great success but you have to have a vented tent. They even say they don't burn that much propane. They are 2000 miles of some interesting country and weather basically.

I've heard others have really good luck with other stoves non wood in Arctic ovens too.
Of course I would prefer wood, to dry stuff with. But alas as I've noted when you have no wood, its a no go.