Extreme Masque

I, and many others, grew up using this for cold, windy ski conditions in New England. It really works and keeps your face warm against the chilling wind. The nice thing about this face mask is that it folds small and flat for storage, which for me means an inside pocket in my jacket. These days I just leave it inside the jacket for emergencies and never even notice it's there. If you do a lot of winter hiking in the NH Whites, you will see many climbers wearing this as well as ski goggles above treeline. There's a reason for that ;-)

I've chosen to give this 5 stars because: (1) it works as advertised when needed and (2) is unobtrusive when it's not being used. Seirus also makes the "Neofleece Combo Scarf" combo face mask and neck warmer. Since I primarily carry this for emergencies now, I'm not sure I would want to carry the extra neck warmer fleece since it would take up more space in my jacket.

I must agree with John.....this has served me very well on Mt. Washington. You can breathe fairly well in it, and you can easily pull it down around your neck (and then back up again) to get a drink. I think I paid $6 for mine (on sale :) ). It weighs next to nothing, packs very small, and is very warm. This is always in my pack in the winter...

This looked like a cool idea when I bought it, however after a few snowshoe sessions below -20C it displayed a few defects.



1) Fogs up glasses. Design of the cover pushes warm air from your mouth out partially up accross your nose and right into your galsses making them fog instantly.



2) Insifficient ventilation. The air holes over the mouth were too small to let me breathe without feeling restricted. Heavy breathing also made the fogging issue worse as more air would go up into my glasses. I was most confortable pulling it halfway down and breathing through the hole for my nostrils with my mouth. I thought this looked stupid and defeated the purpose. I later saw the OR gorilla nose balaclave that was designed this was from day one, and i find it far superior.