Hip Belts and Belt Belts

The belt on my pants rides just below the hip belt, but since it has a nasty habit of coming loose, I tend to actually tie it to my hip belt to keep everything together. It's a bit of a pain, but you do what you have to.

One alternative is to choose a belt with small, flat, unobtrusive buckle. This way, both can be at the same height (middle riding), if you will.

I wrestle with this too. Usually I hike my pants up and buckle my hipbelt under my other pant belt. This sucks. It is not comfortable and makes it hard to get to my zipper without undoing my hipbelt.

Obviously if I had a pair of pants that fit better it would be nice!

I do have 1 pair that fits well but they have a substantial cotton content so I only wear them on summer dayhikes. I also have a pair of OR Exos softshell pants [which ROCK, BTW (18oz)] that fit well and have a built in low profile belt buckle. With both of these pants that fit well, belted or not, I can comfortably use my hipbelt over the waistband area.

In my experience the less padded hipbelts give the most comfort over more clothing.

I wear pants like REI Sahara that have a integral light webbing belt with a flat plastic buckle. I find that the less bulk under the hipbelt the better.

Also, hipbelts can ride a little higher or lower depending on the pack's design. I've got three packs, and none of them ride in exactly the same place, but all end up being comfortable.

I find a leather belt and normal buckle are just not very compatible with a backpack and hip belt. the belt makes a painful lump on the hip bone, and the metal buckle wants to fight with the hip belt buckle.

Instead I use a nylon strap and buckle for a belt when backpacking. It's a 1" strap with a squeeze-release buckle I picked up at REI years ago. The buckle is quite thin, flat, and produces none of the problems a regular belt buckle has. I splurged and got myself a new one this past year! It's secure and can't be felt under the hip belt. The buckle usually starts above the hip belt, but sometimes ends up below. In other words, the belt/buckle becomes a non-issue.

“I wear pants like REI Sahara that have a integral light webbing belt with a flat plastic buckle. I find that the less bulk under the hipbelt the better.”

Definitely subjective here — I wear REI Sahara with the integrated belt / plastic buckle as well. I find it flat and unobtrusive enough that it doesn’t get in the way.

But here’s another idea. Replace your belt with a length of double-sided velcro! Lighter, no buckle at all, and great for “micro adjusting”! Also, you can cut off a shorter section to replace your watchband.

Right now the pants I use are too large (lost significant weight and I'm too cheap to by new ones) so I can wear a belt and pull the waist up past the hip belt on the pack.

When the pants fit correctly I ended up carrying the belt with me in the pack and only put it one when I had the pack off. I just couldn't find any belt that was comfortable with the hip belt over it.

I use this – http://www.unclemikesle.com/products/belts_bags_gloves/belts/belts_deluxe_inner_duty.html – belt if the pants I’m using don’t come with their own belt. After I bought the first one and used it for a while, I ordered a second just in case I wore out, lost, tore up or otherwise was deprived of the first belt. That has been eight or ten years ago and the first belt is still going strong and I use it for everyday wear. On a belt scale of 1 – 10, I give it a 10 pants up.

The Uncle Mikes belt looks like a great idea. All I need to do is to look into replacing the belt on my pack with some belt loops and just use the Uncle Mikes to hold the pack down and the pants up.
OUCH!
Bitten by the MYOG Bug!!

Uncle Mikes — 1.5" is unnecessarily wide. The REI one I posted above is 1.0". But IMO, 0.5" is plenty wide. Hopefully, someone can link a half- inch version.

My current hiking pants have a small integral belt. When I hiked with other pants I used a military surpluse belt. For a while walmart sold a webbing strap with a buckle in the sporting goods area. Not sure if it was a meant to be a belt or not but we used them.

+1
For the price, WalMart's strap next to the packs in the sporting goods section is the way to go.

As Henry Ford said, "You can have any color you want, as long as it is black."

I made a belt from grosgrain at JoAnn and used a quick release clip… http://www.joann.com/joann/catalog/productdetail.jsp?pageName=search&flag=true&PRODID=prd34408

Just wear it like a normal belt under the hip belt, never notice it's there.

I avoid belts altogether, none of my pants/shorts have more than a drawstring.