Rain Gear

ppine wrote:
I used to work in SE Alaska with 150 inches of rain a year.
Helly Hansens are the favorite. Or Filson tin cloth.
Check the Alaska Outdoors Forum for a discussion.
If you are in the field in SE, you are going to get wet. When the rain stops the brush is wet. There are plenty of streams to cross. You can wear waterproof gear and get wet from the inside, or breathable gear and get wet from the outside.
YOu can spend a lot of money and get fancy gear, but you are still going to get wet.
In SE, spring and early summer are less wet. Late summer and fall are really wet. The month of Oct in Ketchikan averages 30 inches. The mountains are even wetter.

This x10.

It all does really depend on what one will be doing. If you're working (loading pipe, shoveling, cutting timber) you need Helly Hansen or equivalent...something stout enough to hold up to wear.
For just observing, almost anything will do....and there's a whole spectrum of stuff inbetween those two extremes.

My summer rain gear that gets used for hiking around Los Anchorage and other southcentral areas (but doesn't get used for dedicated fishing or high in the mountains) is a lightweight ("Russell Outdoors" IIRC) rubber coated nylon coat with big vents and North Face coated gore-tex "water resistant" pants. This setup covers almost any conditions in the average summer.

The trick more than anything is what you wear underneath: More often than not, in the summer, I leave the rain gear in the backpack until I stop or turn to go back. I wear polypro or merino base layer with a wool shirt and some variant of fleece pants....as noted above, one will just get wet and it's best to have clothing that will not lose it's efficiency when wet.

Probably not practical for visitors, but to the extent you can avoid cotton clothing (i.e. jeans) for outdoor excursions, it would be a good idea. On a tour boat where you can go back inside, it's no big deal. At mile 3 of a 6 mile hike, wet jeans (either from rain or perspiration) are no fun.