This Is The Shitty Parka JD And Usha Vance Wore To Greenland

The matching $250 jackets were not a match for the cold

“Nobody told me,” Vice President JD Vance remarked on the cold, upon landing at the Pituffik Space Base in Greenland on Friday. Located 750 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it was minus three degrees Fahrenheit out, a fact which shouldn’t have been surprising. Nor is it surprising that Vance and his wife Usha, wearing matching parkas, were utterly unprepared for such conditions.

The items in question are Alpha Industries N-3B Parkas. With a retail price of $250, insulated jackets don’t get much more basic than this. The exterior is nylon, the inner is polyester, and insulation is provided by polyfill. The synthetic fur hood trim is removable.

I reached out to Alpha Industries for clarification on the insulation material used, and the level of warmth it’s able to provide. “We use a polyfill,” a product expert responded. “We use 240gsm for the body and 180gsm for the sleeve.”

If you’ve ever shopped for a cheap pillow or comforter at a big box store you’ll be familiar with polyfill. Made from old plastic bottles, those are shredded into thin fibers, which are then pressed into a lofted insulation material. This is the most basic insulation material possible.

“GSM,” stands for grams per-square meter, a measure of material weight. It’s mostly useful as a way to compare the relative warmth provided by two different items using otherwise identical insulations. A jacket filled with 240 grams per-square meter of polyfill will be twice as warm as one filled with 120gsm of that same material.

But not all insulations are created equal. High fill-power down is able to pack a ton of insulation into a very light, very compressible material. As synthetic insulations increase in technical development and cost, they also pack more warmth into less weight and volume, while adding the ability to regulate body temperature through breathability, while managing moisture.

240gsm of polyfill will be about as warm as a midweight down puffy. Something like Patagonia’s Down Sweater Jacket ($279). Over a t-shirt, one of those should keep you warm through mild activity levels like walking down the steps of Air Force Two in temperature as cold as 30 degrees. That’s above zero.

On a recent trip to Yellowknife, in our enemy to the north’s Northwest Territories, I was able to remain completely comfortable in temperatures around minus 20F by wearing 130gsm of Primaloft Gold, a synthetic insulation with one of the highest warmth-to-weight ratios possible. My wife was equipped with 350 grams of 750-fill goose down.

One of the reasons we were comfortable is that our parkas were fitted with waterproof-breathable membranes, which prevent convective heat loss by keeping wind from passing through the outer shells. We also wore hats, gloves, face coverings, breathable base layers, and technical mid-layers. All those garments were designed to work together, adding insulation while also conveying moisture created by sweat outwards, to get it away from our bodies, where it would rob us of heat.

The Alpha Industries N-3B is capable of none of that performance. It is not even capable of providing adequate insulation for anything close to sub-zero temperatures.

It’s hard to imagine how the Vances ended up wearing such an inadequate piece of gear. Forbes estimates their net worth at around $10 million, and as Vice President, JD earns a salary of $235,000. Surely cost wasn’t the most important factor.

I thought the parkas might have been acquired at an exchange, either at Pituffik, or at Andrews, where Airfare Two is based. But a search of the AAFES website for insulated jackets or parkas shows nothing from that company, and plenty of options from much higher performance brands like Outdoor Research and The North Face. Nor is the parka official issue.

It seems as if the Vances themselves, or one of their assistants, must have actually sought out an Alpha Industries retailer, and deliberately purchased novelty parkas just for this trip.

Then there’s the question of layering. Neither JD or Usha were even polite enough to wear a suit while visiting the self-governing territory of a close NATO ally. Instead they appear to have chosen wool sweaters and jeans. JD’s mid-cut Merrell Moabs ($130), are not available with insulation.

All this is to say: The Vance’s three-hour trip, during which they did not leave the American base, must have been miserable.

Wes Siler is your guide to leading a more exciting life outdoors. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports independent journalism and gives you personal access to his expertise and network, which he’ll use to help you plan trips, purchase gear, and solve problems. You can read more about what he’s doing on Substack through this link.