Review of the Terra Incognita CapeBag poncho
Weight - 500 g, price - $37, material - polyester with polyurethane coating
CapeBag is far from perfect, but still one of the best raincoats you can find in stores. If you can't afford a silicone poncho, then buy a CapeBag.
Advantages: spacious pocket for a backpack, detachable zipper for the entire length of the raincoat
Disadvantages: short sleeves, short-lived fabric
Now it seems to me that I have always had CapeBag, I have become so close to it. But in fact, I only used this raincoat for 3 years - from 2013 to 2016. I bought it quite spontaneously, in a hurry to pack it up for my next trip. In the summer of 2013, on a very rainy hiking in the Tien Shan I saw a CapeBag on one of the tourists and was amazed by the convenience of this raincoat. I wanted to sew myself such a poncho from normal fabric (i.e., silicone), but there was too little time - I urgently needed to get ready for the next trip. So I went to the Terra Incognita store and bought myself a CapeBag, already well aware of all its shortcomings.
For the next 3 years we were inseparable. The poncho accompanied me on hikes in Nepal, Turkey, the winter Carpathians, Montenegro, Georgia, Poland, Norway and Iceland. I was completely satisfied with it and recommended it to all tourists as an almost ideal option for rain protection. But at the end of the summer of 2016, time took its toll. The fabric literally gave in - the polyurethane layer began to peel off, the seams began to leak and, worst of all, the backpack pocket tore. In full accordance with the law of meanness, this happened in the middle of an extremely extreme hike in Norway. I had to darn my raincoat literally on my knee, during a short break between rain squalls. I repaired the hole and continued the hike. But judging by the condition of the fabric, it was clear that this was a short-term solution and further operation or repair was essentially pointless.
Of course I was sorry. In my opinion, 3 years is too short a service life for a piece of equipment that is not the cheapest. Perhaps it’s not the number of years that have passed (but the intensity of use) and this raincoat will last longer for you than for me. One can only guess here. But I know for sure that there are more durable fabrics. I have a silicone tent that has been working tirelessly for 9 years!! That is why I sewed my next cloak (to order) from silicone, simultaneously eliminating the second significant drawback of Cape Run - short sleeves.
Yes, the CapeBag only covers your arms up to the middle of your forearm. I don’t know what prompted Terra Incognita to design a raincoat with such a sleeve length. If in warm climates, when you put a raincoat on a T-shirt, there are no problems with short sleeves, then in cold climates you had to somehow cover your arms. I even made “accounting” sleeves from silicone so that I wouldn’t have to wear (and take with me) a membrane jacket under my raincoat. A friend of mine tried to solve the problem of short sleeves by purchasing a raincoat in size XXL. But this turned out to be not a very good idea, because... the cloak was too long and made it difficult to walk.
If the rain is not too heavy, then I did not zip up the raincoat, but used several top Velcro strips originally intended to fix the windproof strip. This raincoat has a zipper with two dogs and, if desired, you can unzip the bottom, leaving the top closed.
The backpack pocket can be hidden by fastening the auxiliary zipper. At the bottom of the coat there is a large button for connecting the front and back hems. This should prevent the raincoat from being lifted up by strong winds. This is very relevant for hikes in Iceland and Patagonia, however I have never experienced this button.
When the rain has stopped, you can not take off the poncho, but unzip it, take your arms out of the sleeves and fold the hem back. The backpack will remain covered, the raincoat will dry out, and its owner will not sweat. The floors can also be tucked into the backpack belt and then they will not dangle under your feet.
The Terra Incognita CapeBag poncho is sold in two colors - blue and green and three sizes: S-M, L-XL, XXL-XXXL. My height is 179 cm and I was comfortable in a raincoat in sizes L-XL. My wife (height 175 cm) wears size S-M. By the way, she is the one depicted in all the photographs in this article. Her poncho has already lasted 3 years, and now we are looking forward to the outcome :)
Important. There are hundreds of similar raincoats that at first glance look exactly the same, but in fact lack the most important advantage of the CapeBag - a long detachable zipper. Without this zipper, the meaning of the poncho is lost, working with it turns into torture: it’s uncomfortable to put on, takes a long time to take off, and you can’t breathe. Make no mistake! The same Terra Incognita has a PonchoBag model, which from the photos looks no worse than the CapeBag (and costs less). But this is EVIL!!! You cannot buy a poncho without a long central zipper.
Kirill Yasko, December 29, 2018