I was needing to add some shirts to my kit, to use as base layers when hiking, and occasionally to use when I ruck in the mornings. After a lot of whittling of options I picked up Himali’s Pursuit Tech Tee in the long sleeve version. This is a really nice product, which is near perfect for what I need.
Materials & Specs
This is a no-frills poly-spandex shirt. Here’s the details:
- 4-Way stretch
- Moisture-wicking
- Fast-drying
- Soft
- Breathable
- 90% polyester – 10% spandex
- Average weight: ~ 7.4 oz
- UPF 50+
The notable things from above, for this shirt, are the 4-way stretch which is signficant and the high UPF 50+ rating which is excellent. As with all the items I have had from the brand, the shirt is well made. One note is that there is no stated anti-odor applications I can see mentioned.
In Use
This shirt is extremely smooth in hand, and almost silky in feel. It has a ton of stretch to it as well. I’ve noticed that it dries excxeptionally fast for the weight of the material (which is thicker than a standard sunshirt). All of that culminates in something which feels really nice to wear, and rarely ever binds your movement when you are active.
I have worn this as both my only layer, and as part of layering on colder hikes. This is much better as part of a layering system, then it is on it’s own, but there’s certainly no real issues with it on it’s own — for the fall time of year, I’ve found that it’s still too thin to wear solo, and I think once things warm back up you’d be better served by the Eclipse sun hoodie over this as the Eclipse is lighter weight and breathes better.
At the same time this shirt has a high-UPF rating, which makes it a great baselayer for high elevation endevours where you might be shedding layers and go down to yor base layer, while still in the full sun. This is exactly what I picked this up for.
The overall cut of the shirt is excellent. It’s loose enough that it’s not grabbing your body when worn on it’s own, while it is trim enough that all my layers easily can go over the top of this. I’ve also found the shoulder seam placements to be well done and not cause any discomfort when wearing with a backpack.
There’s only one downside I’ve found with this shirt, which is that the odor management is not where I’d like it to be. I’ve had shirts which pick up body odor very quickly and that’s certainly not the case here. At the same time, after a hard hike or workout, the shirt has certianly picked up body odor and in need of washing. This is effectively the only downside on this shirt, which makes it harder to choose this for anything where you want to gain multiple wears from the shirt (like say backpacking).
There are two things which this shirt does better than any other I own:
- The moisture management on this shirt is fantastic. Most shirts I have with this weight of fabric can tend to stay feeling wet for far too long, but with the Pursuit there’s no such issue. And becuase it dries fast, it makes for an even better baselayer, often after a workout the shirt is mostly dry by the time I finish my stretching.
- The ability to move in this shirt while wearing a backpack is exceptional. The very high spandex content on this shirt makes it really awesome to wear this with a backpack on. Far too often with most shirts, I’ll find the cuffs pulling up my arm as I move around, but here the sleeves and shoulder have so much stretch that this has yet to be an issue.
Even with my concerns on the odor management, I still went out and grabbed a second shirt.
Overall
This is very close to perfect for me, my only wish would be a touch better odor control, as this can build up odor even after a moderate hike. For day hikes and rucking, this is a winner in my book.