Shoulder strap attachment options

Yes, using that method on our production Bears Ears pack. The flexible connection seems to allow the strap to lay where it may on the users shoulder, ie conforming well.

The bonus is a simple and easy replacement of the straps if size is off or foam gets comprised down the road.

The Bears Ears is, like the Zoro, a pack that rely on the hipbelt for absorbing most of the load. I have not tried it on a belt-less design.

Nunatak, do you have reason to suspect that it wouldn’t carry as nicely without the hipbelt?

I learned from Luke Schmidt’s article to sew webbing on the back of the pack as you describe, then sew ladderlocks on the tops of my shoulder straps and buckle them on to the webbing. Luke did this to be able use a favorite set of shoulder straps between different pack bags, but I found that this also allowed me to play with the length of the webbing for really dialing in precise fit. I did this on my MYOG airbag pack. I didn’t sew the webbing into a straight horizontal seam, rather into a reinforcement patch that matched my shoulder angle, but this has me thinking that maybe that’s unnecessary with the play of the webbing. I have done a similar thing with my frameless, hipbelt-less pack, but with a much shorter length of free webbing between the pack and the straps. Take a look at the ZPacks Sub-Nero for an example of this on such a pack. Best of luck!

nashville cutaway packs do this. You can attach different kinds of straps to it – different lengths etc.