7Mesh Skypilot Jacket review

7Mesh describe its Skypilot as a “flawless wind and waterproof jacket for every adventure”. After 24 months of testing, Sanny is not so sure and ponders whether the marketing hyperbole may be doing the jacket a disservice.

• Brand: 7Mesh
• Product: Skypilot Jacket
• Price: £400.00
• From: 7Mesh
• Tested by: Sanny for 2 years

Pros

• Great cut for on the bike action
• Packs down super small
• Lightweight

Cons

• Velcro adjusters needed at the cuffs
• Bring the price down
• Change the marketing blurb to better reflect what the jacket was designed for

Trying to design the ultimate biking jacket is like trying to win a cuddly toy with the claw grabber at the shows. It looks easy but in practice it is anything but. As I found out when researching for ‘The science of waterproofing‘ article, there are many factors which need to be taken into account – cut, fabric choice, waterproofness, breathability, cost, design features.

What is the ultimate jacket for one rider may simply not hit the mark for another. For example, for me a proper mountain fit hood is a non-negotiable. When the rain is horizontal in a howling gale on the top of an exposed mountain, I want to be securely cocooned inside my jacket of choice. However, there are others who find the notion of a hood on a biking jacket a total anathema – who wants something that catches the wind and flaps about when it isn’t raining? One man’s meat etc etc.

Given a blank sheet of paper, my personal preferences encompass the following:

• Full mountain hood that fits comfortably over a helmet? Check.
• Two zipped hand pockets for when things turn nasty and I want to warm up the icy claws that were once my gloved hands? Yup.
• Lightweight and packable fabric that blends breathability with weatherproof protection when things turn the wrong side of hideous? Definitely.
• A cut that is designed to work on the bike but which is equally as capable during extended hike a bike sessions? That would be grand.

Fundamentally, I want a jacket that protects me from the worst of the weather, keeping me warm and dry without the feeling of clammy boil in the bagness that comes when pressing on.

Enter stage left, the rather natty looking Skypilot from 7Mesh, purveyors of high end kit designed and tested in Squamish. Think Scotland’s west coast but further and without the bloody midges. Perusing their website, I was drawn in by some pretty bold claims.

“Skypilot is a flawless wind and waterproof bike jacket built for every adventure. From local trails to long trips into the backcountry, Skypilot’s soft and silent GORE-TEX Active 3L fabric breathes and protects like a second skin, keeping your temperature in check even under hard efforts.

“We patterned Skypilot for a relaxed fit that layers well with other items, but at just 250g, it packs down into a small pack or bikepacking bag with ease. At the front, a smooth-running front zip handles closure duties, while to the rear, a dropped hem keeps water at bay, aided by a roomy hood built to extend over a helmet and cinch for a custom fit. Well-placed, dual front hand pockets complete the jacket.”

Blimey. No pressure to get it right then eh?

I will admit that I was more than a little excited when I read this. I have several pieces of 7Mesh kit and they have all proven themselves really capable out on the trails. The fit and cut suit my 6ft 1in slim frame and the quality of construction is second to none. Throw in the 30 day crash replacement scheme and their repair service and things start to look pretty sweet.

Opting for the now sadly discontinued dark blue colour scheme; this year’s options are now peat (brown), ultra-green and black, I was like a kid at Christmas when my jacket arrived. Tearing open the plastic packaging (come on folks, is it not time we got rid of these altogether as all they do is create unnecessary waste?), I pulled the jacket on and was immediately taken by the cut and fit. I have what is kindly referred to as a positive ape index. Not being in any way hirsute, what this means is that I have long arms for my height and as a result, it can be an occasional challenge to find sleeves that are long enough when over the bars. With the Skypilot, the length is absolutely bob on.

Turning to the main body, the mildly dropped tail and the casual cut mean that running a mid-layer can be easily accommodated but without the feeling of wearing a flappy sail when the wind picks up. The Gore Active fabric feels really nice against bare skin – there is none of that horrible and clammy plastic bag feeling that regular wearers of Gore Paclite will be familiar with.

Despite the lightweight nature of the fabric, it has proven remarkably durable. I ride with a backpack which is usually filled to the gunnels with kit and food on big mountain days out. In my experience, the lighter the fabric, the more susceptible it is to wear when wearing a ride pack. However, the shoulders and back of the jacket still look like new despite an awful lot of use which is reassuring.

Turning to the hand pockets, to my absolute delight, 7Mesh has opted not to use mesh but rather made them from the same Gore Active fabric as the rest of the jacket. In my book, this is a small but very important design detail. If it is cold and wet and I feel the need to put my hands in my pockets, while mesh may serve some breathability function, waterproof pockets mean that the moisture on my hands is not going to be absorbed by my mid and base layers. Call that another big tick in the positives box.

Donning my mountain bike helmet, I found that the over the helmet hood was sufficiently capacious to cover most of the helmet. Throw in elasticated hem cord adjusters and volume adjusters for the hood and things were looking pretty peachy, or at least they were until I started using the jacket in anger which is when the reality didn’t quite live up to the hype.

Off the rail and out on the trail

For my first shakedown ride, I decided to head out along a local network of trails and canals, mixing in fast and easy spinning with some swoopy and flowing singletrack. Being Scotland, it was as you might expect a bit wet and windy – perfect testing conditions.

With a following wind and my hood up, things started promisingly. The jacket was staying firmly in place round my lower back while I experienced excellent sideways visibility with my hood up. I was warm without feeling unduly clammy. Sleeve length was spot on – the ends effectively covering my wrists. With the temperature around 5°C, I have to admit to feeling really rather smug. However, turning into the wind, things went south rather quickly and it was an experience that was to be repeated throughout the testing.

Off the cuff

Starting with the sleeves, while there is some notional level of elastication at the cuffs, the simple fact is that there is insufficient adjustment in them to get a good seal between cuff and wrist. Even with full winter gloves on, I found that wind and rain eventually made their way up my sleeves, the problem worsening the faster I went. The lack of a proper adjuster is the issue here.

While I applaud the elegant simplicity of the design, the sad fact is that the gappy cuffs allow water penetration. I grew tired of moisture reaching my inner layers and the capillary action causing the inevitable feeling of dampness rising up my forearms on longer rides. The problem was even more obvious when doing a hike a bike in the rain. Being unable to establish a decent seal on the cuffs, water would drip down unchecked. The same happened when answering a mobile phone call in the rain.

On colder days, my lower arms would get cold as wind made its way up my sleeves. In the end, I broke out some Gorilla Tape and used it to cinch down the cuffs on sopping wet rides when I knew the jacket would be staying on for the duration. This being a bit of an extreme step, I eventually bought a pair of Voile straps which did an even better job of keeping the water out. What slightly baffled me though was that the previous generation of the jacket had adjusters. It feels like a bit of a retrograde step to eliminate them.

Ya-Hoody Menuhin

Sleeves aside, bigger issues became apparent with the hood and in particular, the adjuster design. At the rear of the hood is a simple pull down volume adjuster while at the front there are two elasticated toggles which are accessed by partially unzipping the jacket. The hood itself features no form of stiffening at the peak.

Compared to the mountain jackets which I am used to where it is easy to get a snug and secure fit around a helmet, the Skypilot falls short of what I had hoped for. Starting with the volume adjuster, the simple rear pull toggle looks simple but the thin elastic and ultra-minimalist design means that with gloved hands, whether wet summer full finger gloves or full winter numbers, it can be hard to grasp the elastic and pull it down.

Unlike adjuster designs from pretty much every big name jacket manufacturer, instead of tightening the hood around your helmet to create a secure, windproof fit, it simply pulls it back while simultaneously pulling your hem up. Volume adjusters that pull either side of the hood from the back are pretty much the norm these days – they are popular because they work really well. The single pull design used in the Skypilot jacket falls that bit short.

Jumping to the internal adjusters at the front either side of the hood, these could potentially improve matters but to be blunt, they were worse than useless. Instead of using a press down toggle or similar, 7Mesh relies on ultra-thin elastic and a tiny plastic disc that acts as a friction plate for the elastic. In practical terms, in order to tighten the hood, you need to partially unzip the front of the jacket (which is not ideal when it is properly hoofing it down), adjust then zip up again. If this was a once only deal, it would be manageable but in the real world, I found that the elastic loosened off with tedious regularity, particularly when conditions were challenging. Repeated unzipping and adjusting was required. In practical terms, I found this to be a great way of letting water drip down the front of my inner layers and getting me wet. When it is properly minging, I have to question what rider would be happy to keep having to adjust their jacket in such a manner. I know that I wasn’t.

The lack of stiffening peak on the hood only made matters worse. Riding into any form of headwind, I found that the only way I could stop the hood from wanting to blow back was to use my chin to hold the top of the zipped section in place. This is fine when it isn’t cold but when I wanted to pull the chin up for a bit of extra warmth, it always came at the expense of the hood feeling less secure.

Wearing a peaked helmet was crucial to success – rainy gravel rides in peak-less helmets made me realise just how fundamental the helmet peak was to the jacket working. Without it, I found that I could not set up the jacket hood such that it did not want to either blow off or obscure my vision when turning to look to the side. As the side adjusters did not stay in place to get a snug fit, wind would catch in the hood and cause it to billow. Turning my head, I would invariably be met with a face full of material. There was no question that on the road, the hood would be a liability when it comes to keeping an eye on surrounding traffic.

After much perseverance and coming to the conclusion that there is only so many times one can reasonably be expected to keep having to adjust the hood, I gave up trying and rode with the hood down which just served to highlight the lack of tab to secure it down and stop it acting like a mini air brake. Again, the side adjusters were found wanting as it was not possible to create a decent seal round my neck meaning wind and water penetrated with ease.

On one particularly windy ride around the back of Skiddaw, with the hood blowing off several times as I rode into a headwind with side serving of driving rain, I seriously contemplated breaking out the Gorilla Tape and affixing the hood to the peak of my helmet. In the end though, I gave up on the jacket altogether and swapped it out for an insulating layer and a windproof.

I was, to be blunt completely underwhelmed; so much so that I ended up having an enlightening conversation with Ian Martin, one of the founders of 7Mesh to discuss my findings and to his great credit, he was open to the issues I had experienced and was able to give some interesting context to the design of the jacket, the evolving nature of waterproof material manufacture and an explanation of why I was having issues with the hood design.

Up front, Ian acknowledged that despite the marketing spiel, the jacket was designed primarily to be an ultralight and packable rain jacket. It was not intended to be a mountain jacket in the traditional sense that anyone who walks or climbs in the winter is more familiar with.

The adjuster design has been designed to work best with a peaked helmet and fair play to Ian, he said straight away that it sounded like my adjusters were faulty. They should have been able to keep the hood under tension when riding. Had I been a paying customer, he indicated that 7Mesh would have taken the jacket back for inspection under warranty. With regards to who the jacket was designed for, Ian said it was for the kind of riding that he and his co-workers do. Think wet and windy tree lined valley and Alpine trails in the west coast of Canada. Had they set out to design a mountain jacket of the type I was expecting, it would have been heavier and have an entirely different design.

To be fair, I cannot fault that honesty. Reading many reviews of the jacket, no one seems to have experienced the issues I did. The lack of cuff adjustment never seemed to come up nor did issues with the hood. It was as this point I realized that I was judging the jacket against an entirely different set of parameters to which it was designed. Fundamentally, I guess it is like criticising a gravel bike for not being an XC race bike. Apples and oranges.

Recognising this, I decided to embrace my inner British Sewing Bee alter ego and spent the princely sum of £2.50 on a set of tiny cord locks. After fitting them to the adjuster cords at either side of the hood and to the rear of the hood, I set off up a Lakeland fell on a cold and dry but crucially windy day. This was to be the moment of truth and to my delight, the hood stayed securely in place and I was even able to get a snug fit around my neck when it was down.

I have to admit that I was pretty pleased with the result. Not simply because of my tailoring prowess but also because Ian had been right about the adjusters being faulty. No more tedious readjustment. Once in place, the hood stayed rock solid around my helmet. At last, the jacket was performing as intended.

In terms of fabric choice, Gore Active is one of my favourites. I find that it hits the sweet spot of breathability and waterproofness. I have other jackets that have used it to great effect. This latest version feels noticeably thinner than what has come before although from a durability perspective, the outer face fabric has held up well to repeated washings.

When new, the jacket beaded really effectively but within a couple of rides, the DWR coating appeared to have given up the ghost meaning that the entire jacket would wet out in a matter of minutes. What this meant was that as rides progressed, the moisture build up from sweat could not transmit from my base and mid layers as effectively as it did previously which resulting in me feeling a bit damp. The jacket was definitely not leaking but nor was it working as it did when new. This not being my first rodeo, I of course reproofed it on a number of occasions but the same problem would eventually re-occur.

Speaking with Ian, this is a reflection of where the entire industry now finds itself. Older DWR treatments outperformed more modern ones in terms of longevity as they used forever chemicals. With the move towards DWR treatments that aren’t harmful to the environment, there has been a trade-off made in terms of performance. It’s where all manufacturers find themselves and if I am being honest, I am happy with the trade-off.

A little concerningly, as the test progressed, the fabric behind the main zip started to delaminate. When this happens, it usually signals the start of a terminal decline for a jacket. Fortunately, Gore have a great approach to customer service when it comes to such matters thus if it had been my own jacket, I would have returned it under warranty and no doubt be furnished with a brand new jacket. It hasn’t become any worse though and the performance of the jacket has been unaffected.

Overall

As a mountain jacket, the 7Mesh Skypilot falls somewhat short of the marketing spiel but on reflection that arguably misses the point of this jacket. As I came to realise, it was never meant to be for that. My initial experiences with it were unquestionably disappointing. It did not perform like a mountain jacket. However, once I accepted that and made a small adaptation to the hood adjusters such that they worked as they should have done had they not been faulty, I became much more favourably disposed to it.

The jacket does pack down really small, it is lightweight but durable, the fabric works really well in a biking context, the deep hand pockets are bloody brilliant, the fit is nigh on perfect and it looks great to boot even after 24 months of hard testing. With a working hood, I no longer was concerned about taking it out on the fells and mountains in wet and windy weather. I’d still prefer to have adjustable cuffs for the reasons outlined earlier but my Voile strap solution helped adapt the jacket to be suitable for hike a bike epics in the mountains. I’m glad it went from me being underwhelmed with it to it being a favourite piece of kit. The faulty cord adjusters really coloured my opinion of the jacket but having spent some time riding it with a hood that stays in place, I’m happy to take it out on big mountain rides. It may have been a bit of a bumpy path but it got there in the end.

Review Info