What’s led you to retire a backpack?

[Josh @ Acromoda]

I’m really interested in hearing what specifically has to led to a pack failing or being truly worn out.

Has it been the stitching? Puncture or tears in the pack body? Abrasion? The foam in the straps getting flat?

I’m guessing a lot of bags never really get used to their end of life, but I’d love to hear what happened from people that did fully wear out a bag.

[Matthew / BPL]

I think it’s time to retire my REI Flash 18 after ten years. The coating is peeling off of the fabric all over the place.

[Ryan Jordan]

* Bottom panel wearing out, mostly due to abrasion from scraping on rocks when I’m scrambling above the treeline.

* For packs where I’m carrying heavy loads, the stitching has blown out where the hip belt attaches to the backpack (a lot of stress gets transferred there with heavy loads).

* Top strap buckle attachment webbing ripping out when I crank that down hard.

[Nick Gatel]

In 50+ years I have retired seven backpacks.

• Mountainsmith Frostfire 3 — I gave this pack away because I just didn’t like it. Complicated system to adjust the torso height among other things
• Gossamer Gear Murmur — I just wore out two of them, mostly from damage hiking cross country and lot of repair tape
• zPacks Zero – wore it out — delimitation and seams starting to fall apart — actually the pack lasted much longer than I thought it would
• ULA Ohm — just didn’t like the pack at all — a lot of little designs that didn’t match how I operate, especially the water bottle pockets
• Another ULA pack I forgot the name — after a few trips didn’t like it either the fit was just weird and I gave it away
• Gossamer Gear Mariposa — this pack was actually kinda of nice and I purchased it for longer trips where I need to carry 30+ lb to include water and food — it wasn’t comfortable at those weights and I gave it away

I still have and occasionally use several Kelty external frame packs I bought in the ’70s and ’80s. A couple have needed repairs over the years and Kelty performed them for free. One pack, the D4 I purchased in 1971, was repaired over 40 years later at no cost under warranty — kudos to Kelty.

Except for the Mountainsmith, all the packs that wore out or just didn’t work for me were UL packs. In 2010 I bought a McHale LBP 36 which is my go to pack these days. I liked it so much that I bought two other McHale packs, each a little smaller so I have options for different trip requirements based on volume. One is a Bump 32 and the other a LBP 34. The numbers  represent the circumference of the pack.

I don’t pay attention to all the new packs coming out because I will never need to buy another pack. Other than an occasion nostalgic trip with one of my Kelty packs (once or twice a year usually), one of the McHale packs is what I use. I will be dead before any of them wear out.

[Nick Gatel]

BTW, I noticed there are affiliate links in my previous post. BPL put them there. If I wanted to link to something, I would have linked to the McHale website, which I will do here

McHale Alpine Packs

[Glen L]

“I think it’s time to retire my REI Flash 18 after ten years.”

 

Mines only five years old and its coating is wearing off too but didn’t do anything about it during their recent sale. I expect I’ll keep using it until something rips out. Put some miles on it this morning. It holds all the winter essentials for the Sonoran uplands and it durable enough for bushwhacking the thorn scrub if I’m mindful.

Most of the issues causing me to abandon a pack had to do with the southern Utah sandstone which is very abrasive and ate some packs after a few trips. No sliding of any kind there if you don’t want significant damage. That makes it harder to scoot around on leges or navigate slot canyons. However we have sent several packs back to the manufacturer and they repaired them and shipped them back for no charge. But sometimes one just wants a lighter pack.

[Jerry Adams]

I’ve thrown out packs that have delaminated

I gave my 1970s kelty to the Goodwill.  I would never use it again. It was still in fine shape. I moved to smaller house. I carried 50 pounds?  Young and stupid :)

[Brian W]

I go through daypacks faster than backpacks. I’ll day hike 50+ days a year. I’ll backpack 3-7 days a year.

When I moved from the southeast to the southwest, I got a more substantial daypack to carry water weight better. Also, the desert environment beats them up more. But I generally get a good decade out of a pack before I retire it assuming I can’t warranty repair it.

Backpack tech doesn’t change much these days. Most of the fabric revolution is behind us now.

I do prefer an internal framed pack when I have to carry either lots of water or a bear canister.

[Josh @ Acromoda]

This is great info.

For those that have had delamination kill a pack, where on the pack did this occur? And with what fabrics?

I never experienced delamination with my DCF pack. But I had creases form which eventually became tears. These were repairable with tape, though.

[Glen L]

“For those that have had delamination kill a pack, where on the pack did this occur? And with what fabrics?”

 

The packs I’ve had the coating degrade have been polyurethane coated and the coating is on the inside. Some with thicker coating I can definitely see and others I can feel. They become much less water resistant. If it does look like rain a small 20l trash bag will keep the contents dry. I rarely take that though.

[SIMULACRA]

BTW, I noticed there are affiliate links in my previous post. BPL put them there.

To keep affiliate links from auto compiling. Put something in front of, in the name. Say like,  _Gossamer.Gear.Mariposa

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

I tend to get a new pack way before the old one wears out. Usually the old one is just too big anymore. I keep trying to reduce my base weight and take less stuff. I’m down to a 16″ torso Nashville Cutaway. I was able to hike the AZT and the Wyoming CDT with it and get my stuff to fit. I keep all the old packs for those bear canister trips or pack-ruining chaparral nightmare trips or trail maintenance trips or for if I want to bring more things or for sentimental reasons.

[Terran Terran]

That $10 bright orange pack with a gold ladder frame that I bought at Thrifty Drugstore. The pin holes wear out. They were noisy too. Moved up to a Coleman with a plastic frame. My brother lost it down a canyon during a flash flood.  Belt attachment on a Gregory. I have a Geigerig day pack I like a lot. A bit heavy.  haven’t used it since I bought the HMG Porter. The Porter looks like a paper bag that’s been in the trash, but it’s holding up. I bought some pods to help it out. I feel like the padding is getting compressed or maybe I’m getting old and just feel it more. I keep looking at the Bears Ears. Thinking it might be nice in Ultra.

[Nick Gatel]

That $10 bright orange pack with a gold ladder frame that I bought at Thrifty Drugstore.

;-)

For the younger crowd — back in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when backpacking got really popular, seemed like every store was selling external frame backpacks, stoves and Hank Roberts butane canisters. Thrifty Drug Stores carried such things too at cheap prices.

I do miss the Thrifty ice cream. Double scoop ice cream cone for 10 cents.

[Adrian Griffin]

My first backpack was a Bukta two-pocket frame rucksack. Bought in the old country in 1963. Maybe it was the Snowdon. The frame was 7/32 or ¼ inch solid steel wire, nothing tubular. Don’t know what happened to it.

The first pack I bought in the U.S. was a used dime-store knockoff of a Kelty. Terran and Nick will know what I mean. It didn’t have any hip suspension, but after several years, I got a Kelty hip belt that fitted it. This gave it a new lease of life. But overall, it was a cheaply-made pack and the stitching gradually unravelled so I retired it.

I replaced it with a first-generation JanSport Yosemite. Far better pack and the hip-arm suspension was amazing. But the weakness of the first-generation Yosemite was the packbag design. Too many small pockets. All too often (in my pre-ultralight days) I filled the main compartment, but couldn’t get much use out the pockets because they were too small for what I needed to put in them.

So about 8 years ago, I got a new-old-stock JanSport Carson. Didn’t have the hiparm suspension, but a much better designed packbag. I modified the frame so I could slide the Yosemite hip arm on to it. There I was with a great hybrid pack.

For me, the only thing wrong with this pack was the weight–5.1 lb. About 5 years ago, I was starting to go down the ultralight rabbithole and got a Zpacks Arc Blast. Great pack, light, and good carrying up to its comfort limit of 26–29 lbs.

[Terran Terran]

[Terran Terran]

The Coleman wasn’t a bad bag for the time.

[Terran Terran]

The Coleman wasn’t a bad bag for the time.

[ANZFANZ]

My //Osprey….Aether was shredded after just a couple seasons, outlasted by my **Mountainsm1th—-Boundary which i’ve had for 15 years<—by far the favorite of my large/heavy packs I’ve owned.

Just hung up the tat0nka walker40 after settling on a newer fastpack, lighter, more comfortable, easier to use.

I don’t know if this counts as retiring but, I’ve had the “same” …Deuter,,,futura for 20?25 years? I’m probably on the 4th one, but each before had been graciously repaired by them at least twice before being beyond help. I hated it every time they contacted me with “there’s nothing we can do.” So again and again I lament, and accept the modern, stiff, clean bag that I know I will come to love at some point. Crazy thing is, I found the first one at a thrift store for maybe $10 all those years ago.

[Jerry Adams]

My first backpack was a knockoff of a trapper Nelson backpack – wood frame, canvas bag

I got rid of that a long time ago

[jscott]

I used a Kelty all through my Happy Trails days, and earlier. (Happy Trails was a collective that contracted with the NPS to clear and build trails in the PNW.) This was in the early/mid 70’s. My mother bought it for me at the REI in Seattle. I’m not sure if there were any other REI stores at that time. Needless to say, that pack carried a lot of weight. This pack fell into the void of my memory after I moved to California, although I’m sure that it came with me in my old Toyota.

I can’t help but see a ton of  possibility in these old external frame designs, given modern materials and all that’s occurred in pack features over the last 30 years. An external could easily match the weight of many/most internal frame packs these days. Oh, and that area in the bottom, where everyone used to carry their sleeping bag outside of the pack? Perfect for a bear canister.

[Adrian Griffin]

Terran–ah yes, my dime store pack was very like this, but blue. Don’t know what brand. When I got it, the label had come off. Judging by the glue mark, it was about 1¼ by 14 inches, running across the full width of top flap.

[Terran Terran]

Glue didn’t stick well to those hi tech Japanese fabrics… ionized magnesium frame and all. We made do with what we had. No excuses. No apologies.

[Glen L]

The first pack I ever bought was a a Korean War surplus rucksack that I got at Yellow Front, a cinder block discount store, in Phoenix, Arizona for 10¢ when I was ten years old. I was still using that pack when I was eighteen. Then I decided to buy a tent and needed a bigger pack.

[Terran Terran]

I guess my first “pack” was WWII surplus my dad gave me. . It may have been a duffle bag.
To answer the original question. I don’t think Kelty’s are ever retired. . Most of my packs, I’ve given away.

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