This Offbeat Life
New Economy Cooking
Backpacking by Bus

Be the Duck
The Care and Feeding of Gore-Tex

by Dave McBee

When I noticed that my year-old Gore-Tex anorak (bright orange and black, my anorak! The better to signal low-flying rescue planes if ever I get truly lost in the woods!)...anyway, when I noticed that water wasn't beading up on its surface quite as perfectly as it once had, and when it began to soak through after a long day in the rain, I knew I had to do something. I read the Gore-Tex garment care instruction tag that I had assiduously saved, and was filled with dread. Throw it in the washing machine!? Throw it in the dryer!? Iron it!?

First off, it would mean that I would have to break down and buy an iron. Second, all of us have one or more garments in our closets that were, at one time, waterproof and breathable. And then we washed them, carefully following instructions, and they haven't been the same since. Said garment would never breathe again (making it officially dead), would be converted into a sponge (useful, perhaps, for a dry desert jaunt in which you wished for a catch basin to store your own bodily secretions, a la the stillsuit of Dune's Fremen of Arrakis), not to mention the fact that you could now count on the garment to drip moisture down your back whenever you wanted it the least.

In short: wash it? dry it? IRON it? Why not just take a match to it and cut short the torment?

I called the Gore-Tex people, and they assured me that I would not be ruining my jacket if I followed instructions. So I went out and picked up some NIKWAX Tech Wash nondetergent soap, and a bottle of NIKWAX TX.Direct wash-in reproofing.

I still had some doubts, so I went to the downtown Seattle North Face store, and talked to them. The employee I talked with told me that he had used the above-mentioned products, but noticed afterwards that the treated garment no longer "breathed" as it had before. He then called the Gore-Tex people, and together they figured out what was wrong: washing in the reproofing has a tendency to coat the whole garment, inside and out. The garment is still waterproof, but moisture now has trouble evaporating out through the membrane. So they now recommend using NIKWAX TX.DIRECT spray-on reproofing instead. With that, you can keep the waterproofing agent on the outside, where it belongs, and not clog up the pores that allow moisture to evaporate out through the garment. Current recommendations, by Philip McFadden of North Face, are as follows:

WASH, following fabricspecific instructions, with NIKWAX TECH WASH. Use a home washer, as you need to keep the water level low to maintain proper dilution, and as the commercial washing machines found in most seedy, rundown apartment buildings could indeed take the chrome off a trailer hitch. Home machines tend to be gentler.

MACHINE DRY on medium heat setting.

SPRAY with TX.DIRECT SPRAY-ON REPROOFING. Hang your garment from a hanger, or, better yet, a dressmaker's form. Spray evenly and carefully. Spray it with the hood up. Allow to air dry.

SPRAY it again. Spraying a garment manually is an inexact art. You don't want it to leak anywhere, so repeating the procedure increases the likelihood of thoroughly coating the whole thing. Air dry again. You don't have to worry about any harmful fumes: the product is water-based and about as eco-friendly as you can get. But be prepared for whatever surface you happen to be spraying above to become amazingly slippery! Quite fun, actually!

MACHINE DRY on low heat. This step is important: it sets the finish. It takes the place of ironing (everyone I talked to was afraid of ironing their GoreTex, or maybe they just didn't want to admit that they didn't have an iron, either).

This whole process, admittedly, sounds like a pain in the ass. Actually, it was. For me, it meant busing out to my folks' place and tiptoeing through the cat poop in the basement laundry room. But to don your correctly reproofed Gore-Tex whatever and watch rain bead up and roll off like...well, it makes it all worthwhile. If not, go get yourself some Helly-Hansen HellyTech, and be done with it! The Helly-Hansen people guarantee this stuff to be waterproof for the lifetime of the garment (whatever that is), and you can just throw it in the washing machine, then the dryer, and then put it back on. Salespeople at the Seattle Patagonia store also recommend the NIKWAX products for their waterproof/breathable garments, and suggest that using the wash-in reproofing is not all that bad (it sure makes it easier, but you miss all the slip'n'slide action!), as they claim that whatever blockage occurs in the pores of the garment is quickly "blown out" by your body's oils. Breathability returns within a few wearings. The reason that one particular salesperson said that he liked using the spray-on reproofing was that it enabled him to custom-spray: to spray it more thoroughly and heavily on areas where he would need it.

Another option, of course, is the Hefty garbage bag. Punch three holes, and you're set (or two holes, if you're the one-armed man). Lawn and Leaf bags will never be the height of fashion, and they're definitely not breathable, but they're dirt cheap, light, multipurpose, and disposable. I never go backpacking without a few of 'em.

Get lost.

Author Dave McBee is drip dry. He likes it that way.