A Performance Tee That Truly Performs

I have well over 50 fishing-related t-shirts, but through years of mixed extreme weather I’ve learned that they’re not all the same, and your standard-issue cotton tee is often a bad choice.

As Hanna and I prepared to hike from the town of Whittier, Alaska to Portage Glacier in early July, I was confronted with a clothing dilemma. The temperatures were going to be in the mid-60s with consistent rain, requiring a light rain jacket, but too hot to add a sweatshirt. Ultimately I elected to go with a light jacket, one that as it turned out was not suited to the drenching rains that we were about to experience. Under it I put AFTCO’s “Anytime Drirelease Performance Shirt,” which I’d just obtained prior to the trip. In fact, I had to take the tags off in the hotel room, and only then did I realize how incredibly soft it was.

As we hiked to the glacier – up 800 feet, down 800 feet, and back along the same route, a total of 5 to 6 miles – the rain picked up. And then it got harder. And harder. As it peaked, we were on a section where the trail narrowed, and with each step you hit a branch or a bush, dislodging even more water. I’d neglected to wear my rain pants, so my legs and socks were soaked, but I was surprised at how much water got into my rain jacket.

By the halfway mark of the trip, I could feel a substantial amount of water soaking the shirt, and to be quite honest, the only things propelling me forward were the thoughts of a hot cup of coffee, a warm rental car and a change of clothes. These old legs got me back, and we proceeded with that plan, but by the time we were 30 minutes up the road toward Anchorage I was mostly dry. By the time we’d finished lunch at a Mexican restaurant, there was no need to change.

While I’d been afraid that I’d smell like a bad combination of wet forest and body odor, no one complained, and I couldn’t tell any problem, so I wore it to the airport and onto our plane to the town of King Salmon. Up until the end, it looked, felt and (as far as I know) smelled like I’d just pulled it out of the package. I don’t recall if I spilled any salsa on it, but if I did the stain guard worked its magic.

I liked this shirt so much that I got it in a short-sleeved version as well.

It even looks decent to wear out to a bar or to dinner – if you can suck in the quarantine gut.