I can’t (and won’t) stop advocating for Patagonia’s Nano Puff jacket. It’s light, packable and perhaps the most versatile layer in my kit. I bought my first Nano Puff — forest green with a bright orange interior — while ski bumming in Wyoming to fend off the cold during backcountry missions and my pre-dawn commute to work.
In Wyoming, the Nano Puff made perfect sense — this conviction was validated by the fact that nearly half the town’s population owned one too. But since moving to New York, I’ve learned that the Nano Puff functions equally well in the city, where fall and winter can be as harsh as they were in the Rocky Mountains. The Nano Puff makes the perfect travel companion too. In fact, I bring it everywhere I go — from weekend trips home to Vermont to heli-ski adventures in Siberia — because it inhabits almost zero space in my backpack, provides padding for my camera and comes in handy more often than not. It also makes a great pillow on long flights.
The Nano Puff Jacket typically runs $199, but right now you can score one for 30 percent off at Backcountry in three colors and 25 percent off in two others — including Balkan Blue, pictured above. It’s one of those if-it-ain’t-broke pieces that Patagonia launches every season in new colors, but the guts of the jacket remain the same. You’ll never need to update it either because Patagonia’s zero-questions repair program will take care of any fixes as it continues to age. (I’ve taken advantage of this arrangement multiple times, and my jacket has the new zipper and patch to prove it.)
