Long Term Report

Long Term Report of
Equinox Katahdin Backpack
By Michael Lissner
30 November 2004

Contents of Review:
1. Tester Biological Information
2. Backpacking Background
3. Product Information
4. Product Description
5. Conditions of Long Term Testing
6. Results of Long Term Testing
7. Final Conclusions

1. Tester Biological Information
Name: Michael Jay Lissner
Trail Name: The Chemist
Age: 22
Gender: Male
Torso Length: 51 cm (20 in)
Height: 201 cm (6' 7")
Weight: 88 kg (195 lb)
Email Address: yourmothership at hotmail dot com (feel free to ask me questions)
City of Current Residence: Berkeley, California
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2. Backpacking Background
I have been backpacking for the greater part of my life. I started with heavy weight packing with the Boy Scouts, but my current style is a highly minimalist one relying on more skill and discomfort and less on creature comforts and toys. Although my backpacking style is an evolving thing, at this point I usually clock in 27.4 k (17 mile) days with a base weight (without food or water) of about 5.4 kg (12 lbs), including my tarp, frameless pack and down quilt. My usual stomping grounds are any of the terrain within three hours from wherever I find myself living.
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3. Product Information
Manufacturer: Equinox Ltd.
Manufacturer's URL: http://www.equinoxltd.com
Product's Name: The Katahdin
Color Tested: Blue/Black
Year of Manufacture: Presumably, 2004
Suggested Retail Price: 110.00 USD
Advertised Weight: 624 g (22 oz)*
Measured Weight: 720 g (25.4 oz)*
Advertised Volume: 55 L (3350 cu in)
Measured Volume: 57 L (3461 cu in)*
*See the Initial and Field Reports for more information about the acquisition of these numbers.
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4. Product Description
This is an ultralight frameless pack made of Coolmax fabric, 1.1 oz silnylon, some mesh and nylon webbing. It has what I consider to be a complete set of straps, and has five pockets including the main chamber. For a much more detailed description, you have arrived at the wrong place. You should seek out either my Initial Report or that of one of the other testers.
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5. Conditions of Long Term Testing
Since the field report I have used this pack for a total of three weekend trips, and a number of training hikes. Two of the weekend trips were in the Sierra Mountains, near Yosemite in the Desolation and Emigrant Wilderness areas. The third was closer to home, at Point Reyes National Park. The Sierra mountains are famous for their high Alpine vistas, and grassy meadows, while Point Reyes, being on the Pacific Ocean is a rather wet area with tall trees and verdant greens. The weather encountered in each of these trips was rather typical autumn in California weather with warm days and cool nights. The one near the ocean was damper and warmer, while the ones in the Sierras were dryer and colder. The elevations for these trips range from about five meters (15 feet) at Point Reyes to about 2,750 m (9,000 ft) in the Sierras.

During these trips, my equipment was very much the same as the equipment listed for the fourth trip in my field report. The heaviest items in my pack aside from food or water were my 666 g (23.5 oz) tarp, my 587 g (20.7 oz) quilt, and my 416 g (14.7 oz) fleece anorak. Loading the pack during these trips was very much the same as what I had settled on at the end of the field report phase. To wit, I began my inserting my 3/4 length Thermarest Ridgerest vertically into the empty pack, and allowing it to unroll. Once it was unrolled, I would place my uncompressed quilt in a garbage bag in the center of it, and then everything else on top of that, using the outside pockets to hold general miscellanea.

During the training hikes, my loading technique was to put as much weight into the pack as I felt would be comfortable. Though I never officially weighed the result, I would guess that it was around 11 kg (24 lb). To reach that weight I would usually use my Thermarest Ridgerest to fill out the pack, and then would stuff the comforter off of my bed into the pack, followed by some weights and some water. I usually tried to put the weights in a logical place so that they would balance well, but I can't think of a time that they didn't move around and bug me. Once that was all together, I would drive to one of the steeper locations in town, and would begin going up and down it again and again for an hour or so. Usually this meant a number of reps up and down the bleachers at the local stadium.
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6. Results of Long Term Testing
The last four months of testing have been important ones for me and this pack, as they have allowed me to do some experimenting with it, and to gain what I hope is some insight. Certain things mentioned in the field report still bug me about this pack, most notably its squat shape, though the odd strap lengths are a bother that I plan to soon remedy where possible. I mentioned the squat shape in some depth in my field report, and I have to admit that it is one of the things that bothers me most about this pack. I'm not sure exactly why it is such a bother, but it makes loading the pack something more of a challenge, and it's just too wide and voluminous for the stuff I carry. If I could make two suggestions to Equinox, this would be the second of them.

The first suggestion I would make to Equinox would be to improve the rain performance of the pack. On a car camping trip that I went on, I took this pack along to hold some gear, and it was then that I realized how poorly it coped. After the first couple of days at this campsite, the rain began coming down in a most violent fashion. I was using a tarp, which coped very well with the rain, but after a few days of this rain, the dirt around my tarp closed its doors for business, and would admit no more water (i.e. puddles began to form). Eventually, these puddles made their way under and over my ground cloth, and it was then that the Equinox met its nemesis.

The first problem it had was that the foam in its very comfortable hip belt is open celled. It absorbs water like a sponge, and in cold, rainy weather is pretty gross and soggy. In addition to being gross, by absorbing water, it gains weight. Significant amounts of weight to such a point that the belt sags when held at the middle. The second problem is that the shoulder straps absorb water in the same way, but to a lesser degree because the foam in them is much thinner. The third problem this pack has with rain is that its back panel is made of mesh, and does nothing to stop rain. Initially, I liked the idea of the mesh, in that my back can get pretty sweaty on a hot day, but on every backpacking trip that I took with this pack, I had a closed cell pad directly against the mesh, effectively stopping my perspiration from going into the contents of my pack. This is probably a good thing anyway. At one point during this testing period, I took a trip to Big Sur State Park. During that trip, rain was expected, and I decided not to take along this pack. Due to my car camping experience with this pack, I feel it would obviously be trouble in the rain.

Crossed Straps

The picture at right serves to demonstrate another problem I have had with this pack. I mentioned in my Field Report that I was having a problem with the top strap popping off of the load and doing nothing for extended periods of time. This was continually a problem on pretty much all of my trips, and probably has a lot to do with how I loaded the pack, but to combat the problem, I developed a technique of crossing the straps so that there is no top strap that can pop off. This solved the problem, but the resulting pack is pulled downward, with the side flaps being pulled on in strange directions. In other words, it looks bad, and can't be good for the stitching on the bag. From what I could tell, this didn't really have much effect on the fit of the bag. For that matter, I am not altogether convinced that the three straps are accomplishing much of anything even when they are working properly.

Because of the way that I loaded the pack, pulling down on the straps really did not seem to compress much of anything. The compression of the pack came from the inside, where everything was pushing out on the Thermarest Ridgerest, not the outside, and pulling harder on the straps didn't do much compressing, because they had to coil the Ridgerest to make anything smaller. I did not actually hike with all of the straps undone, but after having the top one pop off for uncounted miles, I can say that it didn't make a noticeable difference in the fit of the pack. With the coiled pad inside, I have not been able to do much compressing with any of the three straps.

To contrast those rather sour notes, I can now report that I have undertaken a trip with this pack sans hipbelt, and it was great. For me this was a huge step in my backpacking life, so before this trip, I did everything I could to limit the amount of weight in the pack. At this point, all I could do was limit the food I wanted to the lightest things I could get away with, and limit myself to two liters (quarts) of water. I would wager that the gross weight of the pack was around 9 kg (20 lb) once water and food was weighed in. At this weight, I found that the pack was comfortable, though I always knew when I was running low on water in my Platypus because my shoulders felt more comfortable. One of the great things about this pack is the width of the shoulder straps. Each of them is 8 cm (3 in) wide, making for a nice weight distribution across my shoulders. I am happy to say that I do not regret leaving the hipbelt at home, and I believe in the future I will probably do so again.

Another thing that I continue to love about this pack is the way the hipbelt functions. I mentioned in my field report that the hip stabilizer straps work very effectively, and on the trips that I took with the pack and the belt, I have again and again been impressed with their ability to transfer weight to my hips.
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7. Final Conclusions
I have to admit that overall I have not been particularly impressed with this pack - in addition to other nits that I mentioned in my earlier reports, the compression straps don't seem to do much, it is wider and squatter than I would like, and it is highly vulnerable to the ravages of water. The harness system on this pack is more comfortable than pretty much any other system I have used, but I can't say it is better because it absorbs so much water, and because the lengths on the straps are all wacky. For me, the future does include using this pack for some trips, but I don't believe I will trust it on any that involve water or small quantities of gear.

My thanks go out to Equinox Ltd, and BGT for the chance to review this item.

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