The Kelty external frame backpack thread
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Hmm…
According to the Kelty Heritage Timeline page:
1973: “Full-feature” packs
Kelty introduces the Tioga and Serac packs, the first new designs since the early 1950’s.The new packs feature a fully padded, one-piece waistbelt, larger-capacity bag, covered zippers, waterproof fabric, and a new cam-lock buckle. The Serac features a covered sleeping bag compartment. Additional daypacks are also added to the line.
That said, they don’t seem to be waterproof at all – only the panel of fabric that lies against the frame is coated on the inside (consistent between all three packbags I have).
Both my XL Serac with rock-hard suspension padding and newer logo, as well as the latest acquisition with the older logo, have all-metal cam locks – I’ve only seen the version with plastic in your photo (shown below)…I assume you are certain that yours came with the pack new? Because the padding is in such perfect condition on the one I have, I thought maybe it was a replacement suspension, however the stitching is identical to the rock-hard one, and I thought that any replacements Kelty sold were of a newer style…
Note that on the older packbag with black leather, there are only 2 notches in the leather patches on the sleeping bag compartment rather than the usual 4:
I wonder if this is an early prototype made in ’72, then the Serac production got put on hold when the CML acquisition happened? I guess we’ll never know; I wish I were around back then!
Hiked 20 miles on the AT this weekend with the Serac, carrying about 50lbs total as I took my full long hike kit for another shakedown. My wife’s mom came along, and since she didn’t have gear of her own, used the Kelty Super Tioga, a borrowed (also Kelty brand, hah!) sleeping bag, and got the “privilege” of lugging along our 10lb winter tent, the Hilleberg Keron 3 (we used a Keron Anjan 3GT), and a 3lb 4oz Big Agnes Q-Core long wide pad, since that’s what we had available as spare gear. It got very windy at our campsite at night, so both tents ended up very appreciated – the double wall is really appreciable when the wind is whipping hard against the outer tent – one feels a lot better “indoors” as the inner tent remains a lot more stable.
The Serac handled great, though I’m contemplating removing the unnecessary top bar, and though my mother-in-law had some problems with the Tioga’s hip belt causing her pain at first on the second day, after adjusting the pack it went away and caused no further complaints for the trip.
The Cache Hauler suspension worked very well on the Serac, perhaps a little too well – it felt great and I didn’t take as many breaks as I probably should have on the second day – when I did finally take the pack off at the end of it, my hips were sore! The soreness was very well-distributed though, just like the wraparound padding on the hip belt the soreness wrapped around my entire waist. Probably just from having it cinched up really tight for an extended period. It wasn’t bad and the next day feels much better. This was better than my experience with carrying a heavy load with a Deuter internal frame pack, where I ended up with reddened bruised spots on the side of each hip that took several days to heal. I reckon there’s just a bit of learning curve with finding the sweet spot in tightening up the hip belt.
The pack design worked as wonderfully as I could have hoped out on the trail – the organization offered by the numerous pockets meant I always knew where everything was or if something was missing when packing up, and I liked having everything enclosed in the pack without having to lash anything on the outside.
Hi Ed – yes, the metal stay attaches to the main frame – the ends of the stay go through two buttonholes in the fabric, and then attach via the same pin that holds the packbag in place (the two pins at these locations are slightly longer than the rest to accommodate this). On the Serac, it is the second set of pins down from the top, on the Tioga it is the third.
Here is a picture showing the locations (if you look close, you can see the ends of the stays):
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