Sitting towards the top of Dakine's snowboard range is the Gearhart jacket. It aims to offer the ultimate in shell performance, only the best materials and all the features you need in a solid all mountain jacket.
Gore-Tex has been put to good use, with a C-Knit backer incorporated making this famously high performing but stiff and crinkly material a little easier to live with, in fact we found the Gearheart really comfortable and crinkle free overall.
The loose, casual cut and long hem lend themselves well to backcountry snowboarding, in terms of both function and looks and all our testers loved the 'Golden Glow' (mustard) colour on test which looks like it's going to be the in thing this year. Layering up isn't a problem under the Gearhart and you still get bags of space without too much of a baggy look and freedom of movement is top notch.
Breathability and waterproofing are both excellent, with legendary Gore performance and fully taped seams taking care of water ingress, and huge, easily accessible underarm vents allowing you to quickly dump excess heat. These aren't mesh lined like some so you risk getting snow inside your jacket with them open though.
All the pockets you would expect to see are here and all the exposed ones are fastened with waterproof zips to keep the wet out, with the two hand pockets having stylish storm flaps fastened down with Velcro. These pockets are a little bit shallow, but you get two massive stretch mesh dump pockets inside the jacket which makes up for it.
Durability is right up there thanks to the tough 3-layer Gore-Tex construction and excellent attention to detail with decent quality YKK zips and pullers and neat stitching all over.
Overall a lovely looking, solid jacket with great performance fit and cut. If we were putting in lots of riding weeks over the season this is the kind of jacket we'd want to be doing it in.
