Oversuits

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Information

Oversuits play a number of important roles in caving. These are:

• The protection of you and the rest of your clothing from the cave
• The reduction of the amount of water that enters or washes through your clothing
• Keeping mud and grit out of your clothing
• Trapping body heat and keeping off the draft
• Providing friction for the controlled ascent and descent of rifts, traverses etc.

Suits fall into two distinct types:

• PU coated Cordura with stitched seams
• Double PVC coated nylon with welded seams

Both are equally tough but PVC suits must be repaired as a matter of urgency when rips occur, where as cordura suits may be repaired at your leisure or not at all. The advantage of PVC suits is that they are more water proof and don't hold mud; hence they are lighter, more flexible and warmer and as they transport less mud and dust around they are also kinder to the cave.

To sum up those caving in dry to moderately wet caves, outdoor centres and those who know they'll never carry out repairs are probably better off with cordura, while individual cavers operating in wet systems are probably better off with PVC.

We stock heavy duty cordura oversuits from Warmbac and are currently trying to source PVC suits from someone, anyone, help!