finally
bibs will help keep the snow out. Is your jacket a "technical ski jacket" with a waist level "snow skirt"? The snow skirt is pretty nice when you're taking a lot of high speed spin drift . While I'm at it - my ski jacket is called a randonee jacket as it was designed by marmot specifically for randonee. It has double front zippers should one fail, pit zips for ventilation, zippered pockets high on the breast so as NOT to interfere with waist level harnesses, a waist level snowskirt, adjustable neck closure, elastic bottom closure, internal pockets, detachable hood and 2 layers of 3 layer goretex. Its what they call bombproof and it weighs only 28 ounces. Anyway a technical ski jacket costs 4-5 hundred dollars but thats what you get and its not really very good for anything else because its too heavy compared to a generic lightweight shell. I mean I have a 15 ounce packlight shell with a lot of features but I wouldn't feel as good about betting my life on that jacket in EXTREMUS.
Jim