I bought the Klim Badlands Pro in October last year, the week before the rain season started. The plan was simple: stop chasing two separate jackets — one for cold-weather guiding, one for warm summer trails — and commit to a single, do-it-all adventure shell. Six months and around 4,200 km later, I have opinions.
This is the kind of jacket that gets brought up every time a French rider lands in Skopje and asks “so what do you actually wear out there?” The answer used to be complicated. Now it’s: this.
What it is
The Badlands Pro is Klim’s flagship adventure jacket — Gore-Tex Pro three-layer shell, D3O Level 2 armour at shoulders, elbows and back, big cargo pockets, and the kind of construction that makes you feel slightly guilty for using it on muddy single-track. It’s built more in the spirit of Touratech billboards than in the spirit of motocross, but off-road riding North Macedonia is exactly the kind of mixed-surface playground where this category of jacket earns its keep.
The good
The waterproofing is the headline, and it deserves it. The November ride down from Mavrovo when the snowline collapsed below us — three hours of cold, sideways rain — I stayed dry from collar to wrist. No leakage, no clammy cuffs, no soaked base layer.
The ventilation is surprisingly real. I rode the Demir Kapija loop in 32 °C heat with the chest and back vents zipped fully open and managed. It’s not a mesh jacket, and it never will be, but it’s miles cooler than I expected for a Gore-Tex shell.
Armour placement is excellent. I high-sided once near Galičnik (deep ruts, my own fault), and the back protector took the impact cleanly. No bruising. No second-guessing the kit on the way home.
The compromises
Two things to know before you buy.
First, it’s heavy. About 3.4 kg with all liners installed. On the bike that disappears, but if you’re hiking in to a stuck KTM or carrying it through an airport, you’ll feel it.
Second, the price is real. We see it for around €1,300 in Europe at the time of writing. That’s not a casual purchase — it’s a commitment to a specific style of riding.
How it stacks up for our trips
For our enduro guided tours Macedonia clients, we don’t recommend the Badlands Pro. It’s overkill for a five-day Balkan tour where you can plan around the worst weather. A lighter Klim Carlsbad or a good textile-only setup makes more sense for most visiting riders.
But if you guide, ride year-round, or routinely cross weather systems on the same day — the Badlands Pro is the rare piece of kit that makes the wallet damage feel reasonable a year later.
Verdict
For the way I ride — leading groups across the Balkans 200 days a year, often in mixed surfaces and unpredictable weather — this jacket has been the most useful single purchase of the last five seasons. It’s not the right answer for everyone, but it is the right answer for some. If you fall into the second camp, you already knew that before you started reading.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go scrub the mud off it before the next ride.
Cross Macedonia received no compensation from Klim for this review. We bought the jacket at retail.