Quota Zero mountain jacket. Limited edition

Project origin and developping bases. Quota Zero Jacket's project has born from a study about developping an high performance proctective garment designed to better suit environmental conditions in high altitude mountain-climbing, specifically at altitudes of 6.000 meters and higher. Anyway all the design has not started from zero but its bases were naturally developed from the experience maturen on the well-known and celebrated "Absolute Frontiers", the first technical jacket which used Aerogels inside and which was tested in an expedition in Antarctica, South Pole. It was designed by grado Zero espace's team itself at the beginning of 2000s.

Expedition's target: monitoring and evaluating human's being response in fisical and enviromental extreme conditions such those in a mountain-climbing on Everest, at over than 8.000 meters of altitude. The evaluation of this conditions has represented a fundamental opportunity to study cardiovascular, respiratory and endocrine-metabolic alterations in high altitude hypoxia conditions and this chance to study them considering meteorological aspects, thermal comfort of the garment and alimentary aspects, represent an high scientific development.

Project's basic guidelines: in the planning phase for the jacket, the design team decided to focus on keeping the material as light as possible whilst maintaining very high thermal performance. In this way the number of layers required is reduced in comparison to traditional equipment, which is still too heavy. A new innovation is the integration of the glove with the sleeve, thereby avoiding the problem of losing a glove due to strong winds. Moreover this patented system improves considerably the thermal and waterproof capacity of the sleeve/glove group. The thermal and waterproof capacity is wide spread all over the garment: all the point of junction are sealed hermetically with tapes and where this methodology could not be applied there have beed used high frequency technology seams. The inclusion of materials that are light while being highly insulating through advanced thermal properties has made it possible to fulfill this requirement. Using thin layers of microporous membranes and wind resistant textiles, we are able to optimise breathability and lightness, which are very important for climbers who have to make extreme physical efforts whilst being weighed down with heavy equipment on their backs. The structure consists of multiple layers of fabric. The external layer is impermeable and wind resistant whilst the inner layer is thermally insulating.

Another important choice has been the designing of a special opening for the rope that avoid the climber to lift up the jacket to make the rope go through. Particularly interesting in the comfort and perspiration aspects are the 3D fabric used in the back of the jacket, infact it damps the backpack's weight and avoids the sweat formation, and the indescrutibility of Turtleskin, used in the airbags of the Rover probes on Mars, that protects neck and shoulders from the abrasion produced by the backpack's belts and by the equipping.