Gossamer Gear Miniposa Backpack REVIEW

Hey Miguel,
I knew our resourceful readers would come through with some good suggestions for bendable stays, but bamboo was outside of my mindset. What a clever idea! Bamboo is strong and light, and inexpensive; it may be the perfect stay material. One possible problem though is that the bend may "set" if the bamboo gets wet. Gossamer Gear has experimented with curved round stays, and there was a problem with them wanting to turn in the stay sleeves, so a headrail was required to hold them in the right position. Thanks for your ideas. Best, Will.

How long are the stays? One can order two 24" backpack stays from sixmoondesigns.com for between $10-$15. They are made of aluminum and have a slight curve met for the human back. The starlight pack is what the stays are aimed at and the stays are not required to be bought with the purchase, one can purchase the pack without the stays and then later purchase the stays. I have ordered the stays for a friend's vapor trail pack too.

So we are getting clever about the stay problem that Will Rietveld has mentioned several times in his reviews of these stellar packs. I guess the question is will the six moon bendable stays fit the Miniposa (or the Mariposa, for that matter) and will they shift or tend to turn if inserted. Seems a simple fix that one wonders why GG hasn't done this before now or offered the two choices to buyers. One for the true ultralight geek and the other for the not so geeked out ultralighter. Any thoughts, Will?

I am still surprised by the number of "personal opinions" that show up in BPL reviews. While comments like this are great for the BPL forums, do they really belong in a supposedly objective review of the functionality of a product? At the risk of sounding like I'm comparing BPL with Consumer Reports (which I'm not), would Consumer Reports have the excellent reputation they have by stating what is liked and disliked about a product in a review of the facts of a product? I guess the answer would still be an "opinion". ;-)

Case in point, the velcro closures on the shoulder straps and hip belt in now way affect the function of the shoulder straps, hip belt or pack. They are, as Will points out, annoyances to him. But how does that serve a reader of a review? If you don't like using clothing or other articles in the shoulder strap and hip belt, then simply place the foam in them and you never have to open the velcro closures if you don't wish to. The closures are not outdated, as they provide flexibility to the user by allowing the practice of "multi-use gear", which is a tenet of Ultralight Backpacking. Just because one person uses the foam exclusively in the pockets doesn't mean it's a wise decision for us to sew the foam in permanently. There are still others who like the flexibility of opening the pockets. We've had people tell us they use the shoulder strap and hip belt openings to store things such as their driver's license, car key or cash in the belt and straps (such as Jack's post above). Again, multi-use gear. Our new Hip Belt Pockets were engineered to utilize the velcro closure in order to keep them from sliding around on the hip belt as you take the pack on and off, and it works quite well I might add. This allows the pockets to be very functional on our packs, while still allowing the flexibility to remove them and use them on other packs or even inside your pack as a storage compartment (Will, you now have the internal map pocket you so desperately desire. Just attach one of the hip belt pockets to the inside of the pack. How? By using a DIY method, which is another tenet of Ultralight Backpacking).

I just don't see why it would annoy someone to insert the foam into the pocket and then forget about it, if you don't wish to use clothing. In my opinion (this is a forum, not a review), a person reading this review who is new to ultralight backpacking (and not as saavy as most folks here) and trying to make a decision on a pack, might believe that you MUST use clothing in the hip belt and shoulder straps, which according to the review is outdated and annoying. But that's simply not the case. Nowhere in the review does it state that if you don't wish to do this, then just insert the foam and you never have to worry with it again if you don't want to.

Furthermore, the weight savings of eliminating the velcro closures is approximately one ounce. Hardly a weight penalty for the flexibility they provide. There are no manufacturing costs for this feature. Removing them wouldn't affect the manufacturing cost at all.

As an aside, foam does compress and flatten out over time. Again, we provide flexibility by allowing the foam to be replaced when it does wear out, rather than the pack becoming using useless or uncomfortable to wear.

Regarding the “Small map/permit/sundries pocket (right side)”, does a reader of the review really need to know how one person interprets that feature? Nowhere on our website does it state that this pocket is internal. However, in the Specifications grid in the review, this pocket is listed as "map pocket inside", as one of the Features. Wishful thinking, I presume.

The shoulder strap pocket in development that is mentioned in the review is just that; a shoulder strap pocket. It won't be a sternum strap pocket, nor do I foresee us making one in the near future.

As a clarification to your forum post, Will, we have not tested with curved round stays nor have we found that a headrail was needed. They are still in development. There seems to be some misunderstanding on this point, which was clarified in the companion forum to the recent Mariposa Plus review.

The mesh we use on our pad holder on the back panel is colorfast. The manufacturer has stood by their claims of it being colorfast and by their wash tests showing no excess dye running off of the mesh. We are at a loss to explain why this seems to happen to less than 1% of our packs. I have personally worn at least 8 to 10 different Gossamer Gear packs and have never experienced this issue. We are looking at other fabrics and other pad pocket designs.

The mesh pocket stitching issue has been resolved and is no longer a problem.

Mitchell,
This is from our website: "Gossamer Gear exists to make the lightest backpacking equipment solutions on the planet available to like-minded hikers." "Our goal is to be "lightest in class" in the equipment we carry, and to preserve the "ultra" in "ultralight"."

The "true ultralight geek" is our core customer. We are, however, starting to meet the needs of the "transitional" hiker by adding options and/or producing gear that is a little heavier. It's been stated on BPL forums before that we have been testing with various removable stay options that are curved and bendable but we haven't found the correct solution yet. When that happens, they will be available to geeks and transitionals alike. In the future, if you have a question regarding our motives, decisions and/or future direction, please email us directly and we'll gladly respond. That is much better than speculating and generating assumptions, IMHO. ;-)

Jeff – Speaking as a happy Mariposa owner and long term Gossamer Gear customer, you need to lighten up. The review wasn't out of bounds and as a paid subscriber to BPL I look for subjective assessments from experienced reviewers as well as purely factual data.

Yep,

doesnt look good like that.

Jeff, I would see the comments as positives rather than negatives. Everyone on BPL knows and respects the GG gear for what its worth. But nothing is perfect. I've yet to see a gear review yet that doesn't point out something that the reviewer would like to see ommitted/changed/reviewed/altered/added in some way. And while alot of these things are personal preferences…the reviewers on BPL are trying to make a subjective interpretation that they feel will be useful to the BPL community.

Probably would have been better if you acknowledged the problems and mentioned; like you did with the stays, that you are working on them. Everyone respects that.

While I'm not trying to stir the pot here, I think Jeff's comments are a welcome addition to the thread for someone (like me) who has never used this pack. Perhaps, to some, the comments could have been worded differently. I think the post shows that he takes pride in his work – I'm assuming he owns/works GG?
Pushing the padding pocket issue aside (minor issue IMO), a concern I have would be the pack staining my clothes. Given the nature of how most of us treat our gear (like newborns), and the price of some of it, this would be unacceptable to "me".

I don't think the Mariposa line is the only pack out there that's responsible for staining a hiker's shirt or pants. I for one have a Granite Gear pack with the Vapor suspension and the shoulder straps have really stained my nylon shirt and pants. Perhaps I'm one of the lucky few with odd body chemistry (hmmm, I feel normal), but trust me – it's not just Gossamer Gear's problem.

Will is the best reviewer on this site. His articles were a major reason I renewed my subscription.

With all due respect, I disagree that a review should only contain objective data, a fact sheet could effectively accomplish the same thing – that's not a review.

A review is necessarily subjective, and you choose to read reviews from a particular publication because you respect the reviewers experience, knowledge, and opinions.

I would in fact encourage the reviewers here at BPL to accompany their scientific measurements and data with more subjective opinions from their experience with a product to better paint a picture of what using the gear is actually like.

The key is acknowledging which parts of a review are objective, and which are subjective.

Well we have bamboo and now 6mm aluminum tubing. Any other suggestion for alternatives to the carbon fiber arrow shafts used as stays in the Miniposa. Exactly what are the dimensions of these carbon fiber shafts? Do the flat aluminum stays from sixmoons fit or do they have to be trimmed? If anyone has done this, share the method used. I had thought of using a pair of fiberglass wands that came from an old MH Ghost pack and just trimming to size and using the plastic caps that are already in place on these wands to protect the pack fabric. These are already very flexible even if they don't shape the way aluminum does. And they have proved to work exceptionally well in the Ghost.

Did anyone ever find out if the Six Moons stays fit the Miniposa? I have a pair and I am considering the Mini, but I would love to know if they work before I order one.