Mountain Hardwear Women's Ghost Lite Jacket

An insanely lightweight windshell jacket is always a good thing to have at hand or in pocket. It'll keep the worst of the weather off and make a massive difference to body temperature with the minimum of weight penalty. The Mountain Hardwear Women's Ghost Lite Jacket weighs a tiny 86g and rolls into its own pocket when not required. Refreshingly, it's not styled like a crisp packet either.

Made from uber-light 15 Denier Ripstop Z-Grav fabric, which comes from only one fabric mill in the world, in Japan, the Ghost Lite is a genuinely featherweight jacket. The fabric itself is treated with a durable water repellency to keep showers at bay. Pared down to keep that weight benefit, it nonetheless has a hood and a zipped pocket, as well as a tab to roll away the hood if not required. The shape is sleek and athletic but made a bit more interesting and feminine by the addition of a drawcord which creates a sort of peplum affair. A simple way of adding interest to the shape without either a weight penalty or impact on performance.

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As this is a non-cycling-specific jacket, the fit and cut are a more general 'active cut' rather than featuring a dropped tail etc, but there's plenty of length in the sleeves and body to mean that on the bike there are no problems. The fabric is comfortable next to skin, highly breathable and genuinely effective at keeping both wind and showers off, although it's not a jacket you would choose for prolonged wet weather conditions. That's not what it's aimed at though, anyway. It's a jacket that will almost certainly spend a lot of its life curled up in a jersey pocket, making its presence felt as little as possible until needed at rest stops or on descents. As such it's spot on.

It may seem a lot of money for a windproof jacket you hope you'll not wear most of the time, and it's definitely at the expensive end of the spectrum, but it's made from very high quality, high performance fabric and it's well designed and insanely light. Multi-sport enthusiasts would probably feel more benefit from the design and could probably more easily justify the investment. However, a bit of shopping around will turn it up for quite a bit less than RRP.

Verdict

Superbly light, comfortable and effective wind shell but at a cost that may not appeal to some