How does Gore-tex clothing work?

How does Gore-tex clothing work, you ask me. Hmm, good question. Well, let's see what it is first.

Gore-tex is a fabric made of, you ready, Polytetrafluorothylene, (Wow, what a mouthful). This fabric is then taken and glued onto another high performance fabric and that is Gore-tex in a nutshell.

How does it work? This poly fabric, I'm not saying it again, has 9 billion pores per square inch. These pores are about 20,000 times smaller than a drop of water and that is way too small for wind or water to pass through. The thing is, these pores are still big enough for water vapors to go through the other way, that makes it waterproof-breathable or WPB. So that answers the question of how does Gore-tex clothing work. Now let's look at a few other products to give you some options.

There are some other clothing companies out there that do have this same technology. They are just not as well known. For example, Sierra Designs "Genesis" line, Columbia has "Omni-Tech". They are somewhat different from each other but they all do the same thing. Now these lines are cheaper than Gore-tex clothing but they do exactly the same thing.

Now keep in mind that these products will not keep you warm or cool you down. They have absolutely no insulation value except for stopping the wind and rain. If you decide to wear this running in the morning you are going to sweat like crazy or if you wear it on a humid day you will get the same effect.

But these products are ideal for what we are trying to accomplish when we're out hiking and they do well for a host of other sports and fields of expertise as long as they are used properly. They need to be cleaned and cared for as with any hiking product you buy. I have an article called Goretex: Care instruction that will tell you how to do that.

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