would you do this?

In an ideal world your pack is the absolute last thing you’d buy – get all your other gear dialed in and then buy the smallest pack that holds it comfortably.  Reality is different.

Spend the $100 to save weight on another item instead of the pack.  Other people in this forum have different opinions, but I like having a little extra room in my pack.  It allows me to help others out by carrying something of theirs if they’re hurting and I’ve never had a problem with things shifting in my pack.  If nothing else use the extra space in your pack to carry your quilt under less compression.

Thanks, Kevin, that gives me a different way to think about it.

I’d love to borrow a smaller pack and see if I could pack it out with my gear.  I have an interesting mixture, as I am carrying food for me and my wife, along with her tarp and stakes.  In that regard I do not think I could go frameless for now, but it would be fun to see how small a pack I could get away with, but it’s totally not necessary, as in, I would love to, but I can do trips just fine with the pack I have.

a smaller pack is useful for things like climbing where larger ones can get stuck it or throw off ones balance (fatally)

or for showing off to “heavy folks” and brag about how small ones pack is…

the question is do you care about either?

;)

Haha, good points…I don’t really care about either, as I do not quite have the full blown ULer sickness yet.  I like to go as light as I can, but not to the bragging, high dollar cost level of light! lol

I do have this weird obsession with getting new stuff though, maybe that’s the explanation.  Plus it might be fun to get a smaller pack and see if I can get my kit to fit in it!

The fusion had great compression. Are you utilizing the bottom straps to help compress the body?

I tried a 65L last year and found I was able to compress somewhere into the 20-30L range. Is your load less than 25L of volume?

I agree with Kevin. My pack is larger than I need, usually, and I just put my down sleeping bag in the bottom and “cloud pack” by letting the sleeping bag expand to take up the extra room in the pack. It keeps things from shifting around, and my bag is already somewhat lofted when I pull it out of the pack. It also, as Kevin said, ensures I have room to bring out extra items such as trash, abandoned gear, or help one of my buddies out if they are struggling with their load for whatever reason.

Not quite that small a load, but I was able to compress it pretty well…it just looks kind of strange because the rolltop is all the way rolled down, so the top of the pack is flat.  I think the compression straps are great, and that’s probably why it rides so comfortably.  I only feel the weight in one spot, just above my tailbone.  Better than it being on my shoulders like it was with my Talon 44.

I like the idea you guys are saying about letting the things loft a little.  I have tended to be a compression sack guy as I started out, so maybe I can be a little more lax on that, and use the extra room up like you said, and save a few oz on not having so many stuff sacks in my pack!

I see this as purely a cost benefit decision.

first – put the $100 towards something you actually need.

second – put the $100 where it will save the most weight per dollar.

I am like most of us, I don’t really need anything now, I just have the sickness of always wanting to get more stuff!  So I will move on to the second decision, but really will struggle to figure that out!  I have about as light weight stuff as I can afford, and $100 doesn’t by much cuben fiber stuff! lol

It’s hard to cut weight too when you buy a starlyte alcohol stove that weighs .5 oz, but your wife (who comes with) doesn’t trust it and says it’s too slow, and insists you also bring the Jetboil. lol  She says I should bring both and just use the alcohol stove for “messing around.”  Maybe I will convince her after a while. :)

Your comment about the alcohol stove made me smile.  When I did my first foray with an alcohol stove I made sure one of my buddies had their Jetboil along in case I had a problem.  For some reason I felt that the stove would behave differently on the trail than it did on my deck – it didn’t.

I used to use compression sacks but it made loading my pack much harder because they were a solid fixed size and I had to fit everything else around them.  I sleep in a hammock so I’m always carrying two quilts (but no pad).  My current pack of choice is a ZPacks Arc Zip (Panel Loader).  I put the larger of my quilts in the bottom of the pack and the smaller in the top extension.  I then load the rest of the pack (the advantage of the panel loader), zip it closed, and cinch down the outside compression straps a bit to make sure everything is snug.  One of the unsung advantages to loading your quilts this way is that it keeps shifting within your pack to almost zero regardless of your rate of activity.

So, you at least understand where she’s coming from! lol

I am going to be loading my pack for the first time with the new hammock set ups, so I will experiment around without the stuff sacks to see how it goes.

I had the same choice and I’m keeping the 65. It’s nice to have extra room, less stressful to pack.