I have a klim baja s4 jacket and its my all time fav moto jacket because it is so cool in hot weather and I just add a rain jacket when its cold/wet.
I’ve been using it for 5 ish years and its my most used moto gear for ADV (dirt biking is the Mojave pants), but I have a 7000 mile ride to Alaska this summer and I want a more cold weather solution.
So, I went on the hunt for a new riding suit. Klim Carlsbad, MSR xplorer, Klim raptor & basilisk are the main ones I compared as an owner, not sponsored.
I’ve been using the basilisk jacket for 3 winter seasons snow biking. And it is AWESOME! I can zip everything up and get to the play area and then unzip everything and sweat like crazy w/o no midlayers. That is right zero degrees on a timbersled and working hard is plenty warm for me in a Basilisk.I would keep my puffy in the backback in case I had to spend the night or stop moving for a long time.
So, the number one thing that concerned me about the gen2 Basilisk was the venting. The gen2 has weather flaps which make it look sharper (which I do NOT care about) and prevents the zipper pulls from rattling in the wind.
InHardinated is using a winter jacket in very hot Australia summer and found a cool solution of using claw grabber tool to extend the pockets so they open past the weather flaps.
I thought about magnets as I didn’t want that bulk/weight in my jacket 24×7, but then I thought about my 2.5′ large zip ties and they seem to do the trick.
I locked the zip ties open with electric tape, in a pinch I can use these large zip ties for something else along the trail, so they have multi use. They are not bulky/heavy and should not cause any injury.
I did sand down the cut zip tie part so it didn’t rip the internal mesh.
The OD green was my fav color and I’m sad to go to the weird tan color, but anything is better than black. Black is the worst color for heat and reducing heat is always number one priority for me…even in a winter jacket.
I hope someday Moskomoto includes a spring open in the jacket when unzipped, I think it would be easy to do and just sew it into the edges of the vent pocket.
I love being able to strap a lightweight jacket on my bike/bags and run the workhorse jersey while going under 40mph on a BDR trail for cooling and some protection and then when on blacktop going above 40 put on the slide protection jacket. All the time having my airbag as armor. I did the Washington BDR and Colorado BDR in this manner. However with the midlayer for alaska, the Gen1 is too tight and its getting warn and I worry about the arm pits leaking water.
The Klim Raptor is my fav because its easy to say and spell and has no weather flaps on the zips, however my 6’5″ long arms are too long for the XL, which fits perfect with the airbag…other than the arms too short. Klim says they may in a couple of years come out with tall arms version.
The XL Basilisk has the right length of arms, but its too tight with the airbag. The 2xl raptor arms are ok, but it looks like a tent and makes me look 40 lbs heavier. The 2xl Basilisk with the Velcro size adjuster looks much better than the 2xl raptor.
I have on order 2 sizes of the Basilisk pants. 36 tall and 38. I like the idea of having integrated armor in the pants and that is why I chose the MSR Explorer pants cuz I can put them in or out, but having a tan jacket with grey pants is tough..even for me that doesn’t care about matching outfits. I did notice I really love the scoop for air flow on the MSR pants. Again, this is my winter kit and usually I run full mesh for legs and chest, but for Alaska cold/wet I don’t want to have to mess with putting on/off 20x a day.
