In the lifespan of most jackets, four decades is an eternity. But if your only point of reference happens to be The North Face’s legendarily durable Mountain Jacket, you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise. Here we are, 40 years into its run, and the darn thing hasn’t aged a day. In fact, the most recent iteration looks better than ever, a feat it manages to accomplish without compromising its pioneering functionality—y’know, just in case you have yet to scale the Himalayas in the year of our Lord 2025.
No big whoop, right? It’s an archival reproduction—in theory, it should stay the same. Well, not to rain on your parade, friend, but that’s a lot easier said than done. It takes a certain amount of conviction to deliberately eschew tinkering with the original formula, no matter how carefully conceived it was from the jump. It is a little easier, though, when said formula encompasses a brolic sealed-seam shell, alpine pockets, internal drawcords, and the now-iconic zip integration that made the original indispensable to folks confronting the planet’s most brutal summits.
Last time we checked, however, there have been a couple of notable technical advancements since 1985, one or two of which The North Face plugs into its equation with aplomb. The Dryvent Mono Jacket, which looks identical to its ‘80s-era predecessor, is now crafted using a recycled double-layered Dryvent fabric that’s Everest-tested degrees of waterproof. Its Gore-Tex counterpart is even more durable, and, crucially, sits on the body exactly the same way it did in its heyday.
We keep returning to that consistency because it’s important: in the long history of jackets, few are as fiercely beloved as this one. (That isn’t hyperbole—there are literal books written about the sub-cultures that coalesced around it.) It’s also important, though, because of that aforementioned zip integration system, engineered to easily sync up with other legendary TNF hits, specifically the Denali (my favorite fleece of all time) and the Nuptse.
All of which is mostly a long-winded way of saying: I really want this jacket. Do I own a similar-ish shell zip-up already? That answer is kind of irrelevant, because I can’t use my Denali to create a Megazord-tier outerwear transformer with it. So if you’re looking for a light spring jacket that can also level up into a K2-conquering beast come winter, do exactly what a guy in your position would’ve done four decades ago: head straight to The North Face and snag a Mountain Jacket of your own.
