Chris Zimmer Pack for Heavy Loads

Good points Brendan about the Paradox pack. To be fair, I haven't had much experience with bottom-attaching belts, so there may be something I'm missing there. Though, from the little I gathered when I got to try on the Paradox, the shape of the hipbelt was pretty essential in the way that it wrapped. (Keep in mind, I also have and odd hip-bone structure, so the traditional pack fitting doesn't work well for me.)

I like Dave's single stay system, and I have some plans for incorporating a hybrid between his bottom attachment system, the Granite Gear method, and some kind of Al stay (originally I was thinking dual, but Dave has me reconsidering that). We'll see what happens when I finish this Master's program in the next 3 weeks or so. There is a lot of pent-up stuff, so we'll see what comes out when.

Luke I am interested to see how the pack works with big water loads. I am not sure it would be enough volume for me.

I think that hipbelts with dual pulls do a better job of wrapping the belt around the hips and preventing slippage and so there is a middle road of stiffness of foam that really allows that to happen well. But the dual pulls like ULA, Elemental Horizons and the new SMD belts seem to be the way medium (below 50#) load belts appear to be going.

Luke, maybe i missed, but what you did not like in Exped Lightning?

+1 for Zimmerbuilt. I recently got a pack from Chris and the craftsmanship is amazing. As mentioned prices are extremely competitive, and everything is custom down to the smallest details. I'm a very happy customer. Nice pack Luke!

Roman the only thing wrong with the Exped was it was huge for most of my trips. My first Zimmer pack carried all my stuff comfortably and was only 36 liters. My Exped is 60 liters. I could have gotten a second 45 liter Exped pack but even that one might have been big for me. Assuming fit works out this will be my go to pack for most trips. Its compressible enough for weekends and big enough for week long trips. I will be keeping the Exped for winter trips and desert trips with a really, really extreme water load.

I just got the pack and tried it in the house. I like it a lot.

The only concern is with the curved hipbelt it fits lower then my old pack. Apparently curved hipbelts let the pack sit a bit lower then straight ones. I knew something like this would happened but I didn't know by how much.

The torso is right on the line between too-short and long enough. I rigged up a two buckle system instead of the single buckle system in the picture. This allows you to adjust the torso length a tad. With the bottom buckle bearing a bit more of the weight it went from "too short" to "just long enough." You could probably shorten the torso length as well by putting more emphasis on the top buckle.

I'll get to try it out soon. Hopefully the torso is long enough, if not I've asked Chris to save his sketches in case I have to sell this one and make version II. If that happened all I'd change would be the torso length. Hopefully I don't have to go there.

Anyway I learned a couple things in the whole process that might be interesting to other people making packs.

1. Different hipbelts mean the same torso length will fit longer or shorter.

2. Getting everything just right is tricky. Chris is great but you need to do you homework.

3. A key part of load transfer is a good hipbelt. If it doesn't fit well you'll have a lousy pack no matter how good everything else is.