Built by people who got wet.
STORMFELL began with a failed jacket on a Pacific Northwest traverse in 2013. Our founder spent three days soaked in a shell that promised everything and delivered nothing. We started this company to build the jacket that should have existed.
A guide, an engineer, one bad storm.
In 2014, a mountain guide named Mara Vance and a textile engineer named Jules Okafor met in a Portland coffee shop. Mara had just returned from a three-day traverse of the Olympic Range during which her "waterproof" shell had failed on day one.
Jules had spent eight years laminating membranes for aerospace. Together, they asked a simple question: why does a $500 jacket leak in 2014? The answer was that nobody building outerwear had started from the membrane and worked outward.
They founded STORMFELL that winter. The first Hydroshell™ prototype was 580 grams and rated for 18,000 mm. Twelve years later, the FW26 Tempest Shell Pro is 480 grams and rated for 28,000 mm. The work continues.
Four things we refuse to compromise.
If a design choice violates any of these, we don't ship it. Even if it would save us money, win us awards, or trend on social media.
Every seam, zipper, and patch of fabric earns its place. We design from the membrane outward — performance first, aesthetics follow.
Lab numbers tell us a jacket can survive a storm. Only guides, runners, and rescue teams can tell us if it survives the work.
PFC-free DWR across the entire line since 2022. Performance without leaving a permanent mark on the watershed.
Every shell ships with a lifetime seam warranty and free repair for the life of the garment. The most sustainable jacket is the one already on your back.
200+ testers. One promise: tell us the truth.
Every prototype goes to 200+ guides, runners, climbers, and rescue teams across six continents before it ships. They send us photos, hourly weather data, and failure reports. We read every one.
If a tester reports a leak in a seam after 90 days of use, we re-engineer the seam. If a zipper fails in a Patagonian storm, we change the zipper. The product you buy is the product that survived this process.
See the Technology →Find your shell.
Twelve years of material science, field-tested across six continents, in a jacket you will forget you are wearing — until the weather turns.