Tutorial: How to Adapt a Smaller Shoulder Harness to Seek Outside's Backpacks

since no one has lauded your efforts, let me say; that’s slick as slug snot.

Valerie / @wildtowner, I’m considering the Divide myself, for family sherpa expeditions and winter trips. What was it about the Divide that worked for you, and made you decide it was worth replacing the harness altogether?

Stuart — for me “the holy grail” of packs is a rain-proof UL pack that can handle a wide range of weights comfortably.

I don’t do many short trips, and I try to get out for a multi-week trip each summer.  Inevitably, on a long trip, you’ll encounter conditions where you must carry 5L of water for a day or two, along with 6 days of food.  That’s really heavy (beyond the max. of standard UL packs), and I hate having that much discomfort periodically throughout my trip.  Plus, I am often carrying a bear canister, which adds an extra couple of pounds and is bulky, too! But I don’t want to carry a 6lb pack, just because my loads will be heavy 20% of the time… enter the Divide (I hope).

The consensus on Seek Outside’s packs is that they handle heavy (up to 60lb) loads really well.  I can’t even lift 60lbs, but occasionally I’ll have about 40lb (if I’m doing a water cache, or a long water carry far from a resupply point).  By the time I’m a day or two from my next resupply, my pack will only weigh about 20lbs (incl. food & water), but I want a pack that’s comfortable ALL the time, not just when my load is minimal.

I have a 300 mile trip coming up soon, and I’m hoping that the Divide will be the pack that I’ve been looking for.  It has all the basic features I want: water”proof”-ness, mesh back pocket, good waterbottle pockets, reasonable weight. (It lacks hipbelt pockets, but I got one from Chris Zimmer.)  Based on the pack’s reputation, I felt it was worth spending a few hours figuring out how to make a substitute for the “guy-harness”, which stuck out over the ends of my shoulders (!).  If it turns out not to be comfortable for me, I can always sell it, and the new owner can purchase a brand new harness from Seek Outside.  But I’m hoping that I’ve finally found my “holy grail”… :^)

Edited to add:  In reference to Dave’s post, below — good idea, and I’d probably save an ounce, but for now, I’m keeping the Deuter harness intact so that I can still use it with my MYOG pack (built on a Deuter back panel).

Missed this last month, nice work! It might have been simpler, and certainly lighter, to cut the individual straps off the Deuter harness and sew them to a bit of fabric thus making a Seek Outside copy with different dimensions. I like my straps to be a bit more angled than Seek Outside, and I’ve made a harness for use on my Revolution frame. Of course, this requires permanently altering the harness, and getting the angles exactly right and symmetrical is a bit nerve wracking at first.

Any pics of your mods, Dave? I’ve copied Valerie’s concept (nice work, by the way!) in case I am going to need to modify the stock harness. I’m anticipating the stock harness will have the opposite problem for me – too small. I have a couple ideas on how to use my favorite shoulder straps with this setup, but I’m definitely interested in what others are doing with success.

Just ordered my first Unaweep a couple days after a year of trying to decide how I wanted it configured and my usage. Pretty excited!

hi valerie!

thanks for the great tutorial and info on this mod. super smart! i sent you a PM with a question about it :)