Not even a rattlesnake can stop me now...AHHH!!!....*lunge*....run run run....*whew*....AHHH!!....
Written: May 26 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Amazingly comfortable, very durable, very adjustable
Cons: at 7 pounds, the pack itself is a bit heavy
The Bottom Line: This pack saved my back from a lifetime of torment and injury from trying to be entirely too macho for my own good.
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| zoogelsnof's Full Review: Bora 95 Backpacks by Arc'Teryx |
Context:
Two week solo trip, reasonably easy terrain, mostly flat with some small ups and downs and one day of with a 2,000 foot incline on day five. More specifically, Domelands Wilderness area in the Southern Sierras with a freakin’ 70 pound pack.
Experience:
Now, I’ll be the first to say that I am no expert backpacker. I’ve gone backpacking now a total of 6 times in the last 4 years, and always with groups and paid instructors, so this was my first solo trip, and of course being a young buff kid I said, “damn conventional wisdom, I shall buy a massive pack, and I shall stuff it with enough weight to crush an elephant, and I shall walk between 3 and 8 miles a day with it!”
I am reasonably positive that if it wasn’t for this most excellent pack (and my most excellent REI hiking stick) I would’ve snapped my little spine like a twig, but this pack is, at it’s very least, amazing.
How it Carries/comfort
Although when picking it up and taking it off I was reminded of it’s extreme starting weight (even dropping 1.5 pounds a day in food, it was still quite heavy for quite awhile) when I was walking with the pack it felt no heavier then the pack I had rented on previous equations with only a 50 pound load.
It is adjustable on the level that every pack should be, and very few are. On previous trips at some point in the trip my left shoulder always gave out at some point (from a pre-existing long term injury) and I would end out walking a couple of miles in some level of extreme pain from the inability to shift the weight off that shoulder to the necessary extent. I never once had that experience with this pack. First, the weight is shiftable to an extreme level. If I want more weight on my left side lower back but above the hip but below the shoulder, I can do that with about 3 adjustments in 120 seconds. I can put the weight wherever I want it, to a reasonably high level of specificity.
Obviously the vast majority of the weight rests on the wearers hips at all times, but this too was well done with a thick hip belt and yet more tightening straps beyond the main clip for moving the weight forward or back or left or right or wherever else somebody could want it to go.
Standard soreness rules did, of course, apply. Waking up every morning for the first week or so found me with giant sore points on my hips, but I think this is as much a reflection of my crappy ground pad and sleeping for 12 hours on my side with my hip dug into the dirt as much as it’s a reflection of my pack.
I didn’t have to do this, but I could’ve if I wanted to, apparently the metal stays themselves within the pack can move and curve to fit your back more perfectly. I didn’t play with this element of the pack, but one could if one so desired.
Sweating was also surprisingly minimal, I was shocked to take my pack off for lunch or at the end of the day and instead of the standard dripping wet back to which I had become accustomed, it was mostly just damp and quickly dried. I’m not sure how they did this, but I presume it’s something with the materials/design or some such similar thing.
Capacity/Access:
Capacity is pretty simple, I had a medium which means it’s 5,550 cubic inches, also known as, “huge,” in colloquial terms. It held everything one person needs for 2 weeks in relatively mild weather.
In terms of access, it’s fantastic. It’s sectioned off into two major components, a bottom compartment with a zipper that goes all the way around from the padding of the back to the padding on the other side, allowing it to be opened and accessed fully and completely, there is a difference between a zipper that just opens across the front and one that goes all the way around the way this one does.
There is also a nylon divider between the lower section of the pack and the upper section (demarcation noted by where the up down zipper ends and the around zipper is located) so that if you remove something from the lower section things from the upper section don’t fall down and fill in the space, and you can easily put whatever was there back again. This is a very intelligent design and nice bit of work.
The second major zipper runs from about an inch under the top of the pack all the way down the left side until an inch or so above where the bottom zipper is. This zipper grants full access to the contents of the main compartment of the pack, and there is nothing all that special about it really, besides the fact that it exists.
There is an exterior, “wet pocket” which has a drain in it and is waterproof and separate from the interior/other parts of the pack specifically designed for wet items, but which really can serve in any capacity you want. The problem with putting significant weight here is that it tends to unbalance the pack in a front to back sense.
Also in this waterproof pocket is a small zippered compartment used to store...stuff, I guess, I’m really not sure why it’s there. It’s not very big and can’t hold very much, but it’s there, so I should mention it.
The brain is very standard. It’s a big empty pocket into which you can put things. It’s nice because it’s detachable as a fanny pack (the fanny pack buckle also doubles as an extra buckle for the main pack in case of a break) that fits reasonably well. It also is, like everything else, very adjustable. The brain can be shifted forwards or backwards depending on where you’d like the weight to sit, and even left or right if you really want to.
There are two small outside one liter water bottle sized pockets with cinches. They aren’t as deep as I would like and can only hold relatively short objects, my only problem with this pack. My previous pack had nice deep pockets into which I could fit a full 2-liter platypus, but that wasn’t going to be happening in this one.
Construction:
The pack, while not technically water proof, would need to be submerged fully in water for at least 60 seconds before any serious leakage started to appear. The pack itself is waterproof, the zippers are all ultra-water proof and coated (and they NEVER stick, thank you very much). The only non-waterproof part is the nylon at the top and the accompanying cinch tie, but if you had the brain (also fully waterproof) cinched down tight I doubt much water would get in that way. I wouldn’t try to use it as a submarine, but I’d have no qualms about leaving it out in even a relatively heavy rainstorm, as I doubt much water would be able to seep in.
None of the zippers ever got caught or stuck on the trip, and it was dashed against many a heavy rock and branch and developed no tears or rips or even, “pre-tears” where you could tell it was on the edge, but frankly only a really crappy pack would actually show damage after two weeks, so this is something that will take longer to flesh out.
Odds and Ends
There is a set of ground pad straps that strap the ground pad to the bottom of the pack and cinch it up. There are also 3 cross-pack straps that cinch down the pack itself as it gets lighter and has fewer items in it, keeping it nice and tight in close to your back at all times.
Overall
Fit: A
Comfort: A
Extras: A
Absolutely everything and every part of the pack: A
This is an amazing pack that I can’t possibly say enough good things about!
And as for the title, lets just say I had quite a number of run ins with the little devils :-P
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
zoogelsnof
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Member: Zac Cramer
Location: Boston, Mass.
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