The Buffalo shirt is the only piece of technical clothing I have owned in the five decades of ‘doing outdoors’ that does exactly what it says, no marketing bullshit. And do they last, or what? I got my first Buffalo shirt more than fifteen years ago, and it is still very serviceable (except for a hole in the back where it caught fire in a bothy).

I was introduced to Buffalo by my mountain biking friend Iain nearly two decades ago. Back then we were doing frequent multi-day mountain biking trips through the Highlands staying in various bothies (Iain’s dad, a founding member of the MBA, knew of every bothy in Scotland, MBA ones and private ones alike). And for some reason majority of these trips were through the autumn/winter/spring months, with all that entails in Scotland (mostly rain, wind, and not very warm).

For the younger reader this was before Strava was a thing, and long before ‘bike packing’ was ‘invented’; we went where our imagination would take us based on the information on available (paper) maps, and we learnt along the way through collective experience what worked and what did not.

The routes tended to be challenging to say the least. There was plenty of very technical riding in the middle of nowhere where phone signals didn’t reach, and injuries were not on. There was a fair bit of pushing and carrying. River crossing were frequent, freezing and times scary as hell (I still get unpleasant chills remembering a particular bawbag crossing of the Fords of Avon).

And the collective experience borne out that the key to making these trips enjoyable was in carrying as little as possible, and carrying nothing on the bike itself — no turd bag making it impossible to get behind the saddle, no frame bag making it impossible to flick the bike side to side, nothing interfering with the steering.

Carrying stuff in a backpack has its own drawbacks, and so we were making a real effort to keep it minimal, and the three key pieces to that were waterproof shorts, racing-type cycling shoes, and the Buffalo shirt worn next to skin: the shorts kept the arse dry regardless of the ground conditions, the minimal shell of the racing shoes meant the water would just run out after the river crossings, and the Buffalo …

The Buffalo shirt meant that the only other piece of clothing needed were some warm woollen socks for the night. For combined with a synthetic sleeping bag the shirt needn’t to come off for the duration of the trip (the shirt has a much bigger viable temperature range on a bike than when walking, because the higher speed on the bike means the ventilation works extremely well).

And so I got my first Buffalo.

When people talk about Buffalo, as me just now, what they usually mean is the shirts based around the AquaTherm fleece; in fact Buffalo Systems have a rather beguiling range of products, based around different fleeces. I am going to touch on that later, but the core product is the AquaTherm and the variations on the Mountain Shirt.

The AquaTherm fleece, as the name implies, excels at retaining its insulating qualities when wet. This is something that has to be experienced first hand, it is beyond comprehension. I recall the first time I got caught in the Buffalo in a sustained heavy rain somewhere in the Great Glen area, thinking ‘this Pertex thing is incredibly waterproof’, for as far as I could tell, I was bone dry; in reality I was completely sodden, but only realised later after taking the Buffalo off and seeing the water streaming from it (the best way to dry a wet Buffalo is to wear it, it dries pretty fast when worn, but takes forever if you take it off).

The other thing that makes the Buffalo great is that it’s a smock with two double side zips that can be opened to vent and so adjust the comfort zone. Unlike a single zip on a jacket, the two zips mean it is always possible to have at least one of them open and remain protected from the wind regardless of its direction — making good use of the zips is a key to getting most of the shirt. And unlike the ‘modern’ layering system, you can make the adjustments while moving, without taking your bag off. (And, of course, smocks work well with backpacks, the belt can go either through the hand warming pocket, or through inside of the shirt.)

To get most of the AquaTherm, the shirt needs to be worn next to skin; that is the official advice that comes with the garment. There are a couple of issues with this: there is the social aspect, if your ride ends in the pub, you will only make that mistake once; also, if I need to have the side zips open in subzero temperatures, exposing bare skin to the frost is not ideal. So in practice I almost always wear a thin base layer underneath (usually a smelly helly), but in wet and cold conditions, e.g., single digit C temperatures with rain or sleet, it’s much better to go bare skin, it really makes a big difference.

(One more thing to be aware of when wearing a Buffalo shirt in very wet weather is it doesn’t work too well in a combination with waterproof trousers, you will end up with water running inside down the waist. But Buffalo Systems make trousers too!)

Of course, in this world there are no free lunches, and the price for the exceptional insulation is relatively high weight and, particularly, bulk — the reason Buffalo shirts are warm is precisely because they do not compress too well. It’s a garment to be worn, not carried.

The temperature range in which the Buffalo shirt works will be a personal thing, and also depends on how much you are moving. For me it’s a pure winter garment as far as walking is concerned, my body runs quite warm and I find the AquaTherm too warm when it gets above 5C. However, the greater air flow on a bike gives it a bigger range. It’s very good for skinning in colder temperatures too.

There are a few different versions of the AquaTherm shirt; my original is the Active Shirt, made of a bit lighter Pertex than the Mountain Shirt (not sure the current model is), and has no flaps over the zips. While it has served me well over the years, I have always regretted not having gone for the Special 6, because of the zip flaps and the extra length (something I have finally rectified this year). To me the Special 6 is the gold standard.

All the shirts have a velcro that makes it possible to attach a hood on — for winter use this is well worth getting, the hood is well fitting, and even when not worn, it keeps the neck warm (perhaps it’s just me, but I really hate cold neck).

My original Active Shirt was rather quickly followed by a Teclite one, which is the Buffalo I have got the most use out of over the years. The current model seems to have a hood, but my old one is pretty much like the Active Shirt, just with the Teclite lining. It is nowhere near as warm, which makes it usable for most of the Scottish summer, certainly when on a bike. However, the Teclite wet performance is no where near as good as that of the AquaTherm.

I tend to stick with things I find that work, so I got a few more items of Buffalo clothing over the years:

  • The mitts are one of the best kept secrets in outdoor kit, they have an incredible weight to warmth ratio, and will keep you warm even when completely sodden, you just clench the fist every so often to squeeze the water out — I carry these as my back up gloves in the winter whether walking or skiing (they outperform a pair of very expensive ski gloves from a major US brand I own, but they are just a wee bit clumsy to use as my primary glove).
  • The Wind Shirt is just a Pertex shell, but compared to other wind shirts retains all the advantages of a smock.
  • The Alpine Jacket is a more conventional less nerdy jacket, good for resort skiing and such; also great mid layer under a waterproof (Buffalo Systems say not to wear a buffalo under a waterproof, but it really works pretty well, and it does make you realise how much more breathable the Buffalo is compared to Gore and such); it’s the Buffalo I have got the second most use out of over the years.
  • The Parka is a very warm jacket, originally designed for British Antarctic Survey, that can be worn over the shirt. It’s made of a warmer fleece than the AquaTherm, and has a very clever two zip closure that avoids the use of velcro for the zip flap, and makes it possible to zip up the jacket collar independently of the hood. The hood shows its BAS origins, though I can’t imagine being able to ski with it zipped up.

The one thing that has changed over the years are the prices. Back when I got my first shirt, all the Buffalo stuff was very competitively priced compared to other outdoor technical clothing, it’s become more expensive since, but it’s still made in the UK, which is something I value immensely, and it lasts, which in these days of no shortage of ‘ultralight’ one-season crap is something.

Well, I assume that by now you can see I am a believer, it’s not clothing for every occasion, but it covers lots of it.

(The cover image is from a particularly fine Hogmanay outing in 2011.)