So if you need THE highest tech down park Patagonia is your guy.

The Encapsil DWR treated down in the Belay parka is supposed to take 800 fill down to 1000 fill. Probably does as Pagagonia is known for truthful ads.

The high altitude price "supposably" (as Joey in Friends said) also has some expensive-to-sew but very important baffling as well.

Question is why don't they put that Encapsil down in all their down garments?

And would you pay $700. for that parka IF you were a winter climber/backcountry pro of some kind?

Short answer, no. There are plenty warm jackets for plenty less. This is definitely the "gucci" of patagucci. I'd get a Feathered Friends parka long before I bought this, even with infinite money and a professional level of backcountry hiking.

The only time price goes out the window for down gear is a full down suit for the world's toughest peaks. THEN I can justify paying 50% more for tiny increments of change. Maybe up there, a few less ounces and some waterproofness will save my life.

But I'm sure someone will. And he gets this warm fuzzy feeling that he owns the coolest down jacket around. The life cycle of technology works with down too I guess. First get the people who are a little crazy and have too much money and let them test stuff (also known as early adaptors). They also tend to tell everyone just how cool their new toy is. Then hope that all the others who don't want to spend $700 really really want it and start to use it in cheaper clothes – for which you can raise the price in beginning too. In the end it's everywhere if all works well and you can start over with something new.

Most guiding companies for the big hills seem to recommend to buy your down suit in Nepal btw. A lot cheaper and good enough apparently.

Climbing oriented parka without a two-way zip...they do on the other hand supposedly have some kind of lifetime down washing process for free with this jacket. That takes "some" of the sting off the price.

Also the increased fill power (caused by the treated down) does provide some interesting future design choices. I think they're doing it wrong by just using less down though. For a given jacket they should maintain fill weight, that way you have that much more down in the baffles which should increase thermal insulation and water resistance even further than the hydrophobic treatments.

We all know 900fp is awesome (and now the 1000+fp should be similar in weight/warmth performance) but that it collapses pretty easily under humidity and any clothing pressures. So no I'm not sold on down (coated or otherwise) above the 800fp mark aside from the driest of dry trips.