Ten ounces of fleece jacket is all you need for 3-season hiking and backpacking. As a midlayer, fleece’s job is to ensure you are comfortable in cool temperatures while stationary, and comfortable in cold temperatures while also generating heat as you hike. A fleece hiking jacket is not responsible for keeping you warm while stationary in cold temperature; that is the job of your puffy jacket.
As an insulation material, down and synthetic batting are far superior to fleece in terms of warmth-to-weight ratio. Therefore, any insulation weight past what is needed for a lightweight fleece jacket to keep you comfortable while stationary-in-cool or moving-in-cold would be better dedicated to a puffy jacket.
Lightweight fleece jackets weighing 10 ounces or less sufficiently checks those boxes and is plentifully available. Therefore, we believe that midweight and heavyweight fleece serves little-to-no purpose for hiking and backpacking. It is very suboptimal.
Hiker 1 has a Patagonia Better Sweater, a very popular heavyweight fleece that weighs 22.5 ounces. Hiker 2 has a North Face FutureFleece Hoodie that weighs 7.2 ounces, and a Mountain Hardwear Ghost Whisperer puffy jacket that weighs 8.8 ounces, for a combined weight of 16 oz.
Stationary comparison: Hiker 1 can stay comfortable while stationary in their fleece down to 45 degrees. Hiker 2 can stay comfortable while stationary down to 55 degrees in their fleece, and comfortable down to 35 while stationary when wearing both their fleece and puffy.
On-the-move comparison: Hiker 1 can comfortably hike in their Better Sweater in temps ranging from 20-35, but any warmer than that and they will overheat. Hiker 2 can comfortably hike in their FutureFleece in temps ranging from 30-45, or add their ghost whisperer in for temps ranging from 10-30.
Comparison Results: Hiker 2 is carrying 29% less weight and is more comfortable across a significantly wider range of temperatures both while moving and while stationary.
In conclusion, the combination of lightweight fleece jacket plus a puffy jacket weighs less than heavyweight hiking fleece jacket, and outperforms it in all respects. While ten ounces is a slightly arbitrary cut off point, it is easy to remember, and a good line to draw in the sand. Any weight you are putting towards hiking fleece past 10 ounces would be better spent towards a puffy jacket.
There are some minor differences between the how a lightweight fleece jacket is used on a day hike vs a backpacking trip. However, we feel that the differences are minor enough that was have not organized them separately in this guide. But there are three considerations worth calling out.
We’ve thought a lot about the ideal configuration of zippers and hoods that make the best lightweight hiking fleece jackets. For starters, we want to minimize the use of zippers as they add weight without warmth, additional cost, pressure points, and also create another failure mechanism.
It’s acknowledged that zippers add venting, but our preferred lightweight fleece jackets are sufficiently breathable, which means venting is of minimal benefit.
We frequently sleep in our fleece jacket, which is another reason to dislike zippers, as they can poke or rub uncomfortable. We prefer hoods, as they are nice for hiking in cool windy weather, weigh only an additional ounce or so, and add head insulation when sleeping with a hoodless quilt, and when worn over a hat, secure it down to your head nicely.
Given our druthers, we prefer a lightweight fleece jacket with a kangaroo pocket (which also means no full length zippers). A kangaroo pocket is optimal for the following reasons:
It is the best way to warm your hands, since each hand will radiate some amount of heat onto the other. A kangaroo pocket does not involve a zipper, which means your hands won’t scrape against metal. It saves weight, and it won’t ever rub while you have your hip belt on. A kangaroo pocket adds excess fabric over your core, which is an important insulation point and a good use of material.
All fleece is stretchy, moisture wicking, and quick drying by definition. While some lightweight fleece jackets exhibit more of these traits than others, we feel that the baseline of classic microfleece is good enough. We care more about optimizing for warmth-to-weight and breathability, as those traits have a bigger impact on how comfortable you will be while wearing the fleece in most situations.
All fleece is at least slightly stretchy. As hiking is mostly just walking with trekking poles, we don’t need to worry about big climbing reaches. Moisture wicking is of little importance to us as well, as we tend to do most of our hiking in long sleeve sun hoodies, so there is less opportunity for the fleece itself to pick moisture up directly off the skin.
Quick drying is perhaps the most important of these secondary traits, usually due to sweat. But once again all hiking fleece jackets, even inexpensive ones have a solid baseline when it comes to quick-drying.
While some lightweight fleece jackets might be more quick drying than others, we’ve never met a lightweight fleece that was “slow-drying” and think this isn’t a real problem. Rather, it’s something that marketing wants us to think is important.
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