The field of technical baselayers and clothing is very crowded these days. Walk into any outdoor gear store and you have a variety of choices between polyester, capilene, and Merino wool. Nowhere on that list would you find cotton. Well, believe it or not, cotton is trying to make a comeback in spring, 2011, and the Polarmax TransDRY PMX shirt is the piece of clothing that will be shouting through the chorus of synthetics, trying to get noticed.
Cotton kills. That’s what I have always been told when shopping for base layers. In the last few decades, cotton has been totally shunned by the outdoor community. Even professionals like park rangers would say, “cotton kills” as a warning to those who would dare venture into the mountains wearing only a plain t-shirt on their backs. And they’re right. Cotton loses all insulating properties when wet, and will actually make you even colder if you keep wearing it during a rain storm. Hypothermia and death soon follows. So how did cotton find the means to come back on the outdoor recreation radar? They found the way through Polarmax.
Polarmax partnered with the cotton industry to create TransDry, a technical, wicking cotton fabric that moves moisture to the outside of the fabric where it can evaporate faster and keep the shirt dry, just like polyester fabrics and wool.
Here are some features of PMX cotton with TransDRY moisture management technology from Polarmax:
• Patented moisture management technology for cotton
• Reduces cotton’s absorbent capacity and overall drying time
• Limitless potential to engineer desired moisture management performance
• Transfers moisture away from the body or over a wider surface area of fabric
• Reduces fabric cling to skin during exercise
Polarmax sent out the TransDRY PMX short sleeved shirt for testing, and I got to try out this new technical cotton while playing in the Wasatch and Uinta mountains for the last two months of summer.
The first thing I noticed was that the garment looks like a typical cotton t-shirt. It wasn’t futuristic, shiny, or polyester-looking at all, which was nice. It didn’t even look like long underwear, an unfortunate quality of some base layers. Because of this, I was skeptical, but after putting it on, I appreciated the cotton feel. It was time to take the shirt outside.
First I went mountain biking in Park City on a hot, muggy day. The Polarmax PMX shirt was the wrong choice as it’s black and pretty thick. I got very sweaty and the shirt soaked through, showing no ability to wick moisture away at all. I took note of this, but decided that on a humid summer day, no fabric in existence would be able to keep up with that amount of sweat. So I gave the shirt a pass and another chance.
That second chance was a backpacking trip to the Uinta Mountains. This time around the shirt performed much better. Temperatures were in the 60s and it even rained while we were hiking. The cotton fabric felt very comfortable under heavy pack straps and never chaffed. Sweat that built up during strenuous sections on the trail wicked away, and much to my surprise, the rain beaded up on the shirt and rolled off. I was floored to witness this happening on a cotton t-shirt. At that moment I was convinced. The Polarmax TransDRY technology really works.
From then on I’ve worn the Polarmax PMX shirt on multiple hikes, and made it a primary travel shirt because it even seems to wrinkle less than regular cotton. Plus, it doesn’t stink after multiple uses like other synthetic fabrics.
Now that winter approaches, I’ll probably put this shirt away until the spring. I don’t think tech cotton will ever replace the usual suspects, and for skiing or other cold-weather activities I’ll stick with my Capeline and wool base layers. But for any warm or cool weather outdoor activities, the Polarmax TransDRY PMX shirts are perfect workhorses that I think are actually more comfortable overall than their synthetic counterparts.
The Polarmax TransDRY PMX shirts will be available in the spring of 2011.
For more information about Polarmax and TransDRY, click over to www.polarmax.com