Fjallraven Abisko Trekking Shirt

Hiking shirt for hot weather. Heavy for its intended purpose yet offers good ventilation due to the weave of the material.

Fjallraven's Abisko Trekking Shirt is meant for hiking in warm weather. Its material is 84 percent polyester and 16 percent elastane, which makes it comfortably stretchy.

The shirt is heavy for a summer garment, with the medium weighing in at 325 grams (11.5 oz) according to the official specifications. Other hiking shirts tend to weigh no more than 250 g (9 oz). However the material on this shirt has an unusual weave, with tiny points of very thin material arranged in a dense square pattern. The material is intended to provide ventilation, and it works. 

The result is a shirt that feels heavy and uncomfortable if you put it on indoors in warm weather, yet light and airy outdoors because the slightest breath of wind will find its way through to your skin. 

One might ask how tough the material is with those thin spots. What I can say is that I've snagged the shirt on twigs but so far it has not suffered any damage.  

The shirt has press studs rather than buttons. This makes its capacious chest pockets easy to open and close. Behind each chest pocket there is a second pocket accessible by means of a zipper running down the inner edge of the pocket.

The inner pockets are lined with mesh, so theoretically they can be left open for ventilation. But I doubt that this would be necessary given the natural ventilation of the material. 

The shirt lacks vents on the back of the kind often found in nylon shirts. Again, they are not necessary.

Another common feature in shirts that is missing from this one is a tab on the inside of each sleeve that can be buttoned to keep the sleeve in place when it is rolled up. The shirt does however have a stand-up collar extension if you need to protect the back of your neck from the sun. The collar is bigger than average, so turned up and with the extension raised it will cover more of your neck than the average hiking shirt.

As regards fit, the sizing on this shirt is European and large is equivalent to UK and North American medium. Fjallraven describes the fit as regular. I am 6 feet 1 inch tall with a 41-inch chest, and I have found the large to be a good fit. In width it is perhaps on the roomy side, and it is generous in length, but not so much that I would size down to medium. 

As regards the negative points of this shirt, one is its weight. Another is the fact that it is made primarily of polyester, which is particularly odour-prone. For these reasons I would not rate this shirt as better than lightweight nylon (polyamide) hiking shirts for use in warm weather, in spite of the ventilation it offers.  

Background

I have had this shirt for over a year.