Do you love your HMG pack?

I insert a trash compactor bag into the backpack, and then stuff in my top and bottom quilts, clothes, and hammock.  All the things I need to stay dry.  I push the top and sides of this bundle pretty tight – probably tighter than I need to in retrospect.  Then I give the trash bag a twist and push the top part down one of the sides to seal the deal.

On top of that, last weekend, I had a tarp and suspension kit, 1.3L pot/cook it, a mess kit, rain jacket/layers, food bag and/or essentials bag.  Either the foodbag or essentials bag can be attached to the top of the pack – both Ohm 2.0 and Windrider are lacking a top pocket, but both seem to hold the food bag (or probably a canister) well,  My essentials bag is a ZPacks multipack.  For this overnight, everything fit inside the pack with room to spare.  I mention this because the HMG Windrider seems plenty big for most of my weekend trips, and can expand up pretty well by lashing stuff on top.

So my plan next time is to put the quilts in their Silnylon stuff sacks and place them horizontally on the bottom of the pack, clothes as usual in a pillow case, and the hammock – all still in the trash compactor bag.  It will be as compressed as it needs to be by the stuff sacks – maybe more than I need it to be, so I won’t push down on the trash bag.  I had read that many stuff their quilts loosely around other items near the back (front?) of the pack – in a trash bag instead of dedicated stuff sacks.  That sounded good to avoid unnecessary compression, but given I don’t have many other sizeable items, the stuff sack plan seems better.

Still interested if anyone has had good luck with  the HMG Pods.  They are expensive, but are made-by-design for the pack.  I heard somewhere that HMG didn’t recommend it for sleeping bags because of pressure on the zipper, but maybe with a 30-40 deg quilt set the volume won’t be excessive.  If you are not using the large pod for bags/quilts, I don’t know what you would use it for?

Thanks again for the help.

-Bob

yeah if you put compress everything in one solid block then that might cause barreling …

a repack the way you suggested should solve the issue i think .. using the compacter bag as a loose shell and then compressing everything else separately …

basically to minimiza barelling you need to

• not have any vertical bulging … which means that any compressed items should be packed horizontally
• fill up oack well, especially the “dead” areas on the sides … either stuff things in there or pack in a way that there wont be any gaps

compressing things into one big block in a separate bag violates the 2 above rules

personally ive never been a fan of the compactor bag thing ,… as in wet environments your clothes get damp and wet anyways … much better to have them in a seperate bag … not to mention the wet tent inner

;)

I don’t think the pods would help… As it is, one reason I take the Seek Outside more often is I don’t have to worry about how I pack it up. Just throw stuff in. Last year I took a noobie camping for the first time and he scratched his head watching me trying to meticulously pack my Crown VC for 15 minutes at the trailhead so it wouldn’t barrel. I felt foolish. To some with very minimal gear, I’m sure this is a non-issue but for the 12-15lb base weighter (like me) it is. I think the pods would drive me nuts in that you have to carefully pack up each pod, dividing items up to equal the pod space. I can also see how slightly overpacking a pod would feel like a stack of boulders (cairn anyone?). Too much work for me!