Introduction
I've seen in my time outdoors and in retail that packs, especially small-to-mid size packs are often underanalysed, when in truth they should be the cornerstone of a climber's gear. After all, they carry all your gear to and from the crag or up and down the hill - if they're badly designed or uncomfortable they can turn a good day bad and a bad day utterly awful.
Lowe Alpine is a solid, well-respected brand in the Outdoors world, building packs and clothing (intermittently) since the mid 1970's, drawing on experience gained by the Lowe family in climbing and alpinism. Today it's owned by Equip, a UK based company but still churns out extremely high quality gear for both outdoors people and photographers with their Lowe Pro range. Everything is designed to be sleek, go-faster, no massive frills and functional.
The Review
 |
| In use as a daysack on Etive Mor, Jan 2014 |
This pack has been with me everywhere since I bought it in mid-2013, from simple weekends at music festivals to carrying all my gear in Scotland and Wales. It's been used as a shopping bag and a haul sack, a pillow and a seat,as well as its intdended use as an alpinism pack. And after all this use and abuse over almost a full year, it barely looks used a day. The build quality and resilliance on this is absolutely astounding - even for a Lowe Alpine product. I had an Airzone 35:45 before that started to give way after about a year of continuous use - I've used this the same, if not harder and as I said, it barely looks like it's been taken out of the packaging. It's been used to carry gear and rack for a day on Ben Nevis and everything I need for a weekend's climbing and camping in Froggatt - there's nothing I've thrown at this that it hasn't been able to do.
The overall design of the pack is simple, streamlined and functional - a single large sack, a lid with two pockets and an excellent back system. The back itself isn't adjustable, so I'd recommend trying on in store before you buy - the 45:55 is longer and wider, for larger backs, whilst its smaller 35:45 brother is far more suited to narrower, shorter backs. If that doesn't work, they do a 'women's fit' ND version, try that on for size, it's just harder to find in store. On the standard size fits like a glove and I can honestly say it's never given me any kind of back pain, even with heavy weights and long distances. The straps are a little narrow, especially higher on the shoulder but give good stability when on the move, and the chest strap on the new (2014) version is, I think, far more prone to failure than the tried-and-tested version on my (2013) model but that's the only gripe on the load-bearing system I can think of. I'm yet to find anything that matches it as an alpinism pack. I would have preferred some extra external storage - some pockets or somesutch so I don't have to dive into my actual pack for a thermos or gloves, but I know why they haven't and I can live without them.
 |
The headlocker system in
play - beautiful and simple |
The buckle design, whilst not being ground breaking and innovative is extremely strong and effective. Unlike quick-release buckles that tend to have a tendency to fail at the worst time and let all the stuff stored under the lid spill down the side of a crag, the solid metal double-back buckle is absolutely bombproof and even comes in handy as an emergency bottle opener for summit brews! The webbing that makes up the rest of the buckle is solid, as would be expected, but the stitching and attachment points are all absolutely fantastic - almost up to the same kind of standard as used on climbing harnesses, so you can yank it down as hard as you want and it'll just ask for more - a good thing to have in a pack with floating lid capacity.
The lid itself is another work of simplicity and genius - a total floating piece, adjustable to an enormous degree to allow for the stuffing of those jackets, ropes, racks, shoes, small children and baguettes that just won't fit in the main sack. It could be potentially improved by making the lid totally removable without extensive fiddling to act as a simple sack, but that's a tiny gripe for such an impressive pack.
One item of note is the headlocker ice axe attachment system - it's simply brilliant, yet such a simple system that I'm honestly surprised that no one thought about it before. A single attachment bar passes through the leash hole that's found in the head of every axe and two attachments higher up. No matter how technical or simple the axe it'll fit, and it's not going anywhere unless you want it to. Tighten the pack up and the system is tight. Simple but brilliant.
Conclusions
Huge recommendation for the Alpine Attack packs - the one thing I'd say is to check what size you're using at the moment and work out if you need more, less, or the same space. They swallow a surprising amount of kit and when under-loaded the straps can sometimes can lack a bit of adjustment. But for the sheer amount of stuff you can...well stuff into one of these and the load remain stable and comfortable, I'd say it's definitely worth the investment. And just like any gear, look after it and it'll look after you - but this one can take a hell of a beating
Pros
+ Excellent back system for alpinism and climbing - hugs the load to the body
+ Fold-away waist strap padding makes it comfortable with and without harness
+ Headlocker ice axe system is both simple and incredibly effective
Cons
- Simple sack system lacks any exterior pockets
- Shoulder straps are a little too narrow for those with wider backs
No comments:
Post a Comment