Just wanted to post the results of a little experiment I subjected myself to this past Saturday. Here in Southern CA we were having unbelievably strong winds for a few days called the "Santana" winds which rip across the coastal mountains and cities out to sea. There was a high wind advisory in effect for a few days so my buddy and I decided to summit the highest peak in the coastal mountains Saturday, Mt San Antonio or "Mt Baldy" at 10000'. This hike goes past a ski resort with a weather station at about the 2/3 point in the hike. The temp at 5am at the truck was 30 deg and was still below freezing when we summited 3 hours later 4000' higher, cold enough that drops of water froze near instantly on my hydration hose mouthpiece. As a testament to what a wind shell will get you I started off with a Sitka lightweight core, Capilene 4 hoody and OR Ferrosi. After about 400 yards I cut out the Cap4 and finished the hike with just those two layers. The weather station had sustained winds over 50MPH all morning with gusts to 65 and the last 1/2 mile on the summit ridge felt twice as windy as when we were next to the weather station. We actually had to crawl the last 700' to the summit because we were literally getting blown over trying to stand up to the wind. My buddy wore a light capilene, R1 and houdini and was running too hot but figured he would certainly be too cold without the R1.
We knew the conditions would be this horrible and were intent on giving it a go to see how our gear would perform in such intense wind, I was beyond impressed with how warm we were able to stay. Hiking down we both put on synthetic insulation layers til we got out of the wind after a few miles, without the output of jamming uphill we got pretty cold on the decent.
Overall it was an awesome hike, good conditioning and a great test of our gear. I don't know what other setup would have worked so well in cutting the wind and keeping us from overheating. I know the Ferrosi is deemed a "soft shell" but at its miniscule weight I really see it as a heavy wind shirt. Just thinking about doing that hike in something like a a Kuiu Guide jacket makes me sweat. For anything where temps dip below freezing I'll continue to use the Ferrosi and anything else I'll use the BD Alpine start which is similar but much lighter.
This was also my first time using the Kahtool Micro spikes in place of actual crampons, for this type of icy packed snow trail hiking they were fine and did good on steep ascents of packed snowdrifts where front pointing wasn't necessary. The thing I really liked was how unnoticeable they were when walking over dirt and rocks, a huge advantage over real crampons. As the last few miles were still about 50% dirt with lots of icy sections with dangerous exposure on the ridge.