Mountain Hardwear's Q.Shield - A New Take on Waterproof - Video

New within the past year, Mountain Hardwear has introduced a process called Q.Shield to work in tandem with the OutDry waterproofing technology they are already using on some pieces to create a completely new standard of water-repellancy.

For the past 2 years, Mountain Hardwear has been using a laminating process known as OutDry from Italian innovator OutDry Technologies in their line of winter sport gloves. OutDry supposedly improves on Gore-Tex's popular waterproofing process by bonding a "waterproof-breathable membrane directly to the shell fabric," rather than to the inside of the shell fabric.

The new Q.Shield process complements OutDry, which by Mountain Hardwear's own admission "can't prevent exterior fabrics from wetting out," by fusing ion-mask extreme water repellency directly into the shell fabric, rather than coating the fabric like a DWR (Durable Water Repellent) does. Mountain Hardwear marketing goes so far as to state that Q.Shield does not effect feel or breathability and "will perform for the life of the glove," a marked improvement over DWR if true.

OutDry vs. Gore-Tex-style water repellency

Mountain Hardwear's OutDry-equipped gloves have already gotten some support over the last two years when tested head-to-head with Gore-Tex-equipped gloves, and if Q.Shield performs as MH's marketing indicates that it does, damp gloves on the ski slopes may quickly become a thing of the past.

However, as someone who has been reapplying DWR to my kit for years, Q.Shield's almost magical claims of near-waterproofness and lifetime effectiveness will take some serious substantiation to prevail on ingrained skepticism to such claims.