What is the ideal headgear for being out in cold and miserable weather? I know a lot of you deal w/ it almost daily, but I'm from Southern California and quite spoiled so I like to stay warm and dry because I normally am.<br><br>Is a beanie better, or should I get one of those travel hats? Are the travel hats from those outdoorsey companies too light, and should I get something like a commie tanker hat (complete with red star)?

I prefer a wool or wool blend watch cap. Anyone who knits can make you one very quickly. Or, you can buy one from some of the better mail order catalogs.<br><br>Chris

Skunk, People die annually up in Los Padres national forest of exposure. They drive up there within sight of the twinkling lights of Los Angeles and think the rules haven't changed :O( You actually should find a good version of each. A simple watch cap or balaclava for warmth and a brimmed hat for shade from the sun. I can't reccomend a fur type troopers hat. Either an animal rights friend berates you, or a nimrod thinks you ( or your horse) are fair game. Been there ,ducked both;O)

As the father of a near-teenager, let me translate. A beanie, as I understand it, in teen-speak, is a variation of a watch cap. However, the newer popular name allows for a new & greater price & to a market (fashionable teens) who would never otherwise consider such a stodgy, old fashioned thing as a hat. At least that is the vernacular in my area.<br><br>Caveat: I have been advised that they are often made of fabrics other than wool, polypropolene, or any other warm cloth. It may also be made to less generous & warming size than the conventional watch/stocking cap. <br><br>Jonn

synthetic fabric balaclava. Very warm and can be worn watchcap style, among many other ways. Don't leave home without it. I am inseparable from mine, made by Patagonia, but there are several other brands.<br><br>The utility lies in the ability of the balaclava to insulate the entire head and the large blood vessels in the neck - a significant area of heat loss.

I agree- right down to the brand. I have several balaclavas that I've bought over the years, but a medium-weight synthetic fleece Patagonia is my favorite, especially for sleeping in during cold weather. A balaclava also works well inside a jacket hood, which many hats do not. I have a large head, and many balaclavas are too tight after hours of wear; but the Patagonia works.<br><br>I have a lot of hats, but the Patagonia balaclava and the Tilley are the ones that I end up actually taking. The balaclava I'll leave behind when going to warm regions, but the Tilley goes everywhere, even when I don't expect to need it. <br><br>Hats have not been fashionable for men in the US since the JFK inauguration, but they’re still a valuable piece of outdoor gear, and the fact that they’re not fashionable has made them, and knowing how to use them, even more a mark of an outdoorsman. There are areas and circumstances where you'll be in serious trouble without one. IMHO, it's a highly underrated piece of equipment.. mostly thanks to Hollywood.<br><br>

Thanks. The immediate image that "beanie" brought forth involved a propeller, and I hadn't noticed those becoming fashionable lately.. not that it would surprise me.

<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr><p>Hats have not been fashionable for men in the US since the JFK inauguration<p><hr></blockquote><p>Now that you mention it... how many of us wear a hat daily? Few around here do (I dismiss aging juvis wearing ball caps backwards as they are really just making a social/fashion statement) I feel undressed without a hat and think that it's plain silly to omit a hat when outside (and rude to wear a hat indoors, but that's merely a social convention, not a practical matter). Most people recognize me from quite a distance *because* I wear a hat, or so I've been told - I'm not sure that's a good thing, but it does make a silent statement about how few wear hats.<br><br>My normal everyday hat has been a crushable brimmed felt hat for the last 20 years - I guess it's vaugely like a fedora; it's not too snazzy, but it works well. If I walk outside in any but the hottest weather, it's on my head or a similar one that is made from heavier felt and has a leather neck cord/chin strap. Before that I wore one of those shapeless felt crushers as far back as matters. Cold weather I wear a coat (duh) and there is a watch cap "permanently" in a left hand side pocket of all my coats/jackets. Hot weather outings I've used various hats over the years, but I've more or less settled on boonie hats since they work OK and I have a bunch left over from my former profession. Wearing a hat is such a habit that I don't even go strolling thru my backyard without a hat. <br><br>Thankfully, no one will ever confuse me with a fashion plate so it's just an eccentricity of mine. My brother, on the other hand, "can't" wear a hat when at work - it's apparantly too non-conformist in corporate America; even if it's OK in the office, heaven forbid that a client see you in a hat. I had a boss that was a real, uh, can't say the word here - "jerk" - about me wearing a hat - made completely uncalled for nasty wisecracks (he could have simply said "don't wear a hat", at which point I would have said "No"). <shrug> He lives in an LA 'burb and I live in the mid-west, so I didn't have to endure that juvinille rudeness often. We eventually parted ways and I'm still happy and he's still a very unhappy "jerk"...<br><br>Hpw about it - how many of us city denziens wear a hat daily? I'm curious and wouldn't be able to guess one way or another - we have a diverse bunch of circumstances in this forum.

Well, since I brought it up, and you ask the direct question, I have to admit that I don’t routinely wear a hat from day to day. My work is in offices where a hat does cause some hilarity, even when I just wear one when it’s raining… and it’s one more thing to keep track of. I wear one to work infrequently, and then it’s usually a Stetson felt fedora, with a thin contrasting band so I don’t look like an Indiana Jones wannabee- I hope. The shoulder pouch adds to that problem. I avoid wearing either with bomber-style jackets.<br><br>I have a selection of fedoras in felt and canvas, some boonies and “the” Tilley, and a few baseball-type caps in the closet. <br><br>I’m not fond of baseball caps- the only time I wear them is in very cold or wet weather, under a parka hood, because the bill turns the hood opening with my head.. and when shooting outside, where the bill is welcome but a full brim interferes with hearing protectors. Other than that, they let the sun burn the tops of your ears and the back of your neck. Useless. <br><br>The closed-cell foam panel in the crown of a Tilley hat (and some of the imitations) is not just for floatation, but it also takes over the insulation value of a high crown against the beating sun while still letting it roll up or crush for packing. I found this out the hard way, by removing the foam panel and then discovering how much hotter the hat was in the sun. Funny they don’t mention that.<br><br>A trip to Hawaii and a rented convertible reminded me painfully a few years ago that my hair up top is thinner than it used to be, in a spot that I almost never see. I repeated the mistake, less severely, on the beach in Bermuda. Sunburned scalp is not fun.<br><br>It's not easy to wear a hat in the city or suburbs anymore. I mentioned that the fashion for men NOT wearing hats started when JFK refused to wear a Homburg to his inauguration. Detroit almost immediately took advantage of the situation (look at the model years) to lower the roofs on cars, thus saving themselves money in steel and glass (nobody cared about aerodynamics then), and making it much harder to go back to wearing hats. Since then, a hat inside a vehicle has been a problem- ask any State Trooper- especially if you’re 6’2” like me. John Wayne had cars specially built so he could enter without taking his hat off.<br><br>Most actors, though, found that if they didn't wear a hat their face was more conspicuous in more scenes, and then it was all over. Even in movies where men SHOULD be wearing hats (because of the date or setting) they make at most a token appearance, because the actors won’t stand for having their faces blocked or shadowed- revisionist Hollywood history, like the movies set in the '30s and '40s where NOBODY smokes. Silly.<br><br>Hollywood and TV dictate fashion more than we’d like to admit, and so we still aren’t wearing hats today, despite hundreds of generations that knew better. It’s hard to even find a restaurant with a hatrack handy anymore, though they used to be universal.<br><br>As much as I value a hat, knowing how to use one means knowing when to remove it as much as when to wear it… but in the city having one “in hand” feels even sillier and more conspicuous than wearing one, and there are many more circumstances where it’s suddenly too hot to reasonably keep it on. Then there’s the wonderful things it does to your hair. It’s much less of a hassle outside of a city.<br><br>In my defense, I do always have at least one hat in the vehicle. There’s a light canvas floppy with a rope sewn to the brim in my vehicle emergency kit. I take the Tilley whenever I’m planning on walking more than a few miles (this is wooded, shady country, not like much of the West), on all trips out of town, always in a boat, and often just when I don’t know where the day might take me. I also keep a synthetic fleece ski-style cap (sort of a watch cap that lies flat) in the flap pocket of my shoulder pouch at all times. <br><br>The only time my grandfather came to visit, from thousands of miles away and not long before his death, he politely praised the house and possessions, but I think the only thing that truly impressed him was that I had a fedora that almost matched his. He still felt that a real gentleman would not leave the house without one.<br>

Around town under normal conditions, hardly ever. When rambling around in the outdoors, almost always something - in cold weather, a balaclava; in hot or sunny weather, a full brimmed hat basically like your military boonie. Most of outdoors experience has been in the desert SW, and a hat that shades all of the old bean is really, really important. I have always been partial to a cotton hat that could be soaked in water, with a dark underlid to help with glare. It is also important to have a chin cord so the thing will stay on inthe wind. A lot of environments (caves, especially) require a protective hard hat. My favorite is a Petzl climbing helmet. When on the job (before retirement) I theoretically wore the NPS ranger flat hat, which is the most gorgeously impractical headgear ever invented.<br><br>Ball caps are pretty useless, except for fashion statements.