Weight Comparisons - scale accurate to 5 g (0.2 oz)
listed weight: 900 g (31.75 oz)
measured weight: 930 g (32.8 oz)
listed volume: 30 l (1830 cu in)

Product Description:
At the time of this writing you can see a picture by following the manufacturer’s link above, clicking on “Products” and then selecting “Alpine/Trek” from the drop-down menu entitled “Packs”. The Kauri I bought is black, with grey compression straps. It’s a teardrop-shaped, panel-loading (meaning that a zipper runs from the bottom all the way up the side, across the top and down the other side) daypack. It has a plastic frame sheet, an additional zippered "organizer" compartment on the front, two small fabric side pouches with cut out drain holes, padded shoulder straps, an elasticized sternum strap, an unpadded hip strap, a slim fabric sleeve inside and an interior, zippered pocket. The main compartment is accessed through a large, two-way YKK zipper. The back of the pack is thickly padded with an open mesh. This padding features a canal of sorts (an area not quite 2 cm – about .5 in – across, extending vertically through the middle of the padded back) where there is no padding along the spine, which supposedly increases ventilation to the back. The pack has a haul strap on the top, two compression straps across the front and two very small compression straps on the sides. The latter do not reach across the main zipper, but only cover about 3.5 cm (1.5 in) and seem mainly designed to hold longer items placed into the side pouches.

To summarize, never mind the fact that MacPac lists it under "Alpine/Trek", whoever actually designed this pack clearly had commuter use in mind. This appears evident from the flat front pocket and flat side pouches. Commuting to work has, in fact, been my main use of this pack. However, I have also taken the pack on short and long dayhikes and even on overnighters (which the pack clearly wasn't designed for, though it worked out okay).

In Use:
I bought this pack to replace my old one. The old no-name pack bought for sale somewhere had held out for about 10 years of rough treatment nearly every day to the point where the (heavy) fabric was wearing through. This was the pack I wore to the university and generally around town, grocery shopping, on bicycle trips etc – effectively, whenever I needed to carry anything. It had turned from black to brown through UV exposure. So what I wanted was a pack with adequate volume, simple in style (especially to save weight), yet tough enough. And, of course, it should look civilian enough that I could use it for work.
In addition, in trying to get the most bang for the buck, I wanted to make sure that I could use my new pack for much of my dayhiking, possibly beyond. In fact, I have ended up using this pack *way* beyond what it appears to have been designed for (though not even approaching what it is now marketed as).
This pack has turned out to be everything I wanted. Thus, I have used the Kauri extensively – nearly every day for well over a year now. Most of this use has been on the way to work and back, or shopping for small amounts of groceries, etc. I’ve taken it on a (very) few long jogs only to carry water in a water bladder. It has also been on every trip I’ve undertaken since I bought it.

To Work:
To work and back I usually carry my survival packet (I try to carry it always, everywhere), bicycling rain pants and a rain poncho for my daughter in the front compartment and my rolled up rain jacket stuffed into the bottom of the main compartment. The survival packet (with a small first aid kit, assorted things you’d expect in a survival packet and a few convenience items for staying somewhere overnight like a bit of toothpaste and shower gel, a small toothbrush, etc.) has the bulk of about a 1 L bottle (1 qt). The other two items add up to about the same volume once again, which pretty much fills up the entirety of the front compartment (which, being flat, doesn't seem designed to hold much). The front compartment's back panel is also the main compartment's front panel. This means that filling either one to a degree which causes it to bulge infringes on the available volume in the other compartment. I find this to be (slightly) negative even in what I take to be the pack's design intent: for commuting purposes. I feel that a food container and a bottle should fit in here. That is what in a purely commuting environment I sometimes carry with me and wish to keep out of my main compartment. The way it is, it seems meant to accept - without bulging - only a few pens and maybe a folded city map. As the front compartment extends neither all the way to the top nor all the way to the bottom of the main compartment, stuffing the front compartment creates a section of the main compartment which curves inward. I have sometimes found that the main compartment seemed filled up even though I had added only very few things. This was because I was using only part of the available volume in the main compartment located underneath the front compartment. If, with the front compartment stuffed, I was carelessly (my own fault!) shoving things down into the main compartment, they would add up on top of one another in the space restricted by the inwards bulging front compartment, without entirely filling up the space underneath it. This is easily remedied by either stuffing fewer things into the front compartment or by opening the double zipper all the way on both sides, which makes the Kauri gape open.
With the zippers opened all the way, I can fill the bottom section to its fullest. However, I find this difficult to do without putting the pack down somewhere (I am liable to have things fall out of the opened area). So I would not store something there I need to have ready access to (but I guess that’s obvious). Also, the panel loading seems advantageous only when and where I find a more or less clean, level area to put it down on.
Going to or from work, I easily have enough space in the main compartment for a notepad, my big Kryptonite bike lock, some additional paperwork et al. Even a big file folder has fit inside.

What this means is that it works wonderfully as a commuting pack. I can fit everything inside I need (and a little more), it's stayed dry inside even riding my bicycle to work through heavy rains and shows no appreciable wear after what is now about a year and a half of regular use.

Sports:
For sports activities, I put a 3l platypus bag into the sleeve located against the back of the pack. The pack is not marketed expressly as a "hydration" pack, and does not feature a dedicated access port for this. Having a dual zipper extending all the way around it makes this superfluous, however. I can have the hose exit the pack anywhere I want by simply arranging the zippers to meet in that spot, with the hose going through in between them. The bladder fits into the sleeve well – this seems to be the standard bladder size, anyway. I have not encountered any problems with this setup, ever.
While the compression straps on the pack do not compress much, that isn’t needed. With all the straps pulled tight, the pack does not move around on my back while I jog. I also use the hip strap in this circumstance (the only reason I haven’t cut it off). While the bladder is not held against my back by an unbroken line of force from one side of the pack to the other, with the pack cinched so it rides high on my back, the bladder is kept in place well enough by the sleeve not to feel anything moving around. Of course, the filled bladder in the sleeve robs the pack’s main compartment of space, also.

Dayhiking:
For hiking I pack my rain jacket, my goretex rain overpants, sun/rain hat, Buff and gloves into the front compartment (thereby turning it into the “inclement weather section” of my pack). (A " Buff" is a polyester sleeve which one can employ as a very lightweight, versatile head covering.) This again pretty much fills the front compartment to the max. The filled platypus bladder goes into the sleeve against the back of the pack, as described above. The rest depends on the situation:

For general dayhiking, I push cook gear (if any) and food down into the bottom of the pack and add convenience items like binoculars or a book, plus an insulation layer. This fills up the pack without stressing the zippers or needing the compression straps. Often, I also (or, instead) pack extra clothing for my daughter (an extra diaper used to fit in as well, as I recall, though she's beyond that now).
This means that the pack has served all my dayhiking needs well. With short hikes (aka "strolls") of maybe four hours or so, I just drop whatever I feel like taking with me into it and go. In such a situation, I might take a small "sport's nipple"-type bottle and stuff it into a side pouch instead of my drinking bladder. I find this very difficult (though not impossible) to access (and returning the bottle even more so), so I prefer the setup with the hydration system. Plus, my daughter is inordinately impressed by the latter.

For longer dayhikes (around 15 km/10 mi or so - way beyond the kind of commuting the original designer probably had in mind) the addition of cook gear and an insulation layer for a rest break fills up the pack so it requires some care in packing. The way I pack (and I realize this probably already goes beyond what the manufacturer originally had in mind for this pack) there results a chimney of sorts between the filled up front compartment and the bladder in the sleeve, which leads down to a somewhat larger "cave" at the bottom of the pack, below the point at which the front compartment ends. For longer hikes early or late in the season, colder temperatures make me prefer a hot meal in the middle of the day, along with adequate food and a thick fleece jacket. All this does fit into the pack, but not by simply dropping it in. Resorting to a pile vest for warmth has recently freed up some space. I can now take a book or a heavy set of binoculars along, as well.

Comfort:
I find the pack very comfortable – this seems largely due to its generous padding and the plastic frame sheet. Packing my bike lock or my cook set right against the back still does not allow me to feel them when wearing the pack (and then on longer hikes I have a water-filled drinking bladder interposed, as well). The sternum strap is nice. The elastic part of it allows me to breathe freely – the sternum strap flexes enough to facilitate this, yet still does allow me to move the contact area of the shoulder straps around as I like. Yet I never seem to have to adjust it. That a manufacturer finds components so perfectly matched to one another that such a simple construction achieves so much with so little trouble seems nothing short of miraculous to me.
The effective max (comfortable) weight for me with this pack would seem to be about 10 kg (22 lbs) total. (For Your Information, MacPac describes the harness of this pack, which it calls "AirSupply", thus: "Enables you to carry a light load (up to 10kg) in comfort".) For my back at least, this is probably overloading the pack. While the hip strap can achieve some weight transfer, I find that I have to cinch it down harder than I like for this, as it is only a one inch (2.5 cm) wide, entirely unpadded webbing strap. So while I can carry heavier loads for a while, it means I choose (or switch) between sore shoulders and sore hips. I prefer to keep my (carried!) weight below 8 kg (17.5 lbs). I feel that this must be the spectrum for which the pack was designed, for if and when I do, I hardly notice the pack after a while. And of course, packing any more weight into this rather small pack isn’t easy – additional water and/or heavy binoculars are required to make it happen. So it appears to me that the weight carrying comfort of the pack is well designed for its size. Given standard packing, it allows me to comfortably carry what fits inside. I do not fault the pack for not carrying even greater weights in comfort - but having pushed it to its limits, this is where I found the limit to be.

Durability:
The pack is made from "AzTec HP": According to the manufacturer’s website, this is a fabric containing long-staple cotton and polyester yarns, soaked in “resins and waxes” to make it “weatherproof”. In the store where I bought it, I was told that the cotton content will absorb just a bit of water and expand with it, thereby making it almost waterproof. On some days this makes sense to me, on others it seems nonsensical. In actual life, I haven’t had water in the pack yet. I have hiked and biked through rain in it often enough, but never for longer than an hour of light rain or a downpour of mere minutes. The zippers are somewhat covered, so water hasn’t come in that way, either. It seems water-resistant enough for my taste, though I pack my sleeping bag into a trash bag for safety. I won’t guess at the pack’s waterproofness in more extended rains (and am unwilling to waste enough water to simulate).
As far as wear is concerned, little is noticeable on the pack. There is a hint of fuzziness to the fabric on the bottom panel. For a pack that has been picked up and put down on that spot several times every day for over a year now, I find that less wear than expected. At this rate, the pack should last for years.

Features:
Nothing much I haven’t mentioned yet. But this seems to be the right heading to address the little zippered extra compartment inside the main compartment. It’s located near the top, small (about the size of a paperback book), and made of rather thin material. Yet I love it. In here is where I put my wallet and my cell phone, the hardshell case for my glasses, my keys. Thus they are out of the way, kept to the top of the pack where other items won’t press on them too hard, and they cannot hide in the nooks and crannies created by other stuff in my pack. My old daypack did not have such a fabulous feature, and I now cannot imagine buying a pack without it. I guess the large floating top box lids of larger packs are meant to serve the same purpose, but seem to provide too much volume, so that my things get tossed around in it (at least that was my impression with my big pack).
I should also mention here that after an enquiry with MacPac, I was told that the little sleeve against the back of the pack inside the main compartment is meant to help re-insert the plastic frame sheet after it's been taken out as a sit pad. I hadn't tried this before. Pulling it out showed that the back panel does make for a serviceable (closed-cell foam) sit pad. Putting it back in proved to be a massive bother with a few things in the pack - I won't even contemplate doing it with a full pack.

Overnighters:
In continuing to try to maximise my use of available resources, I have used this pack for overnighters, as well. If I were to evaluate this pack as the "Alpine/Trekking" kind of pack it is now marketed as, I'd probably have a rather dim view of it. As pointed out before, however, the design of this pack says that it was meant for commuting, so I realize that this use goes beyond its orginal intentions. For all that, it has worked better than could have been expected:

My down sleeping bag, compressed as far as possible, barely fits into the somewhat larger main compartment space underneath the area infringed upon by the front compartment (what I called the "cave" earlier). Some food and the Clikstand cook set go on top of this (into the "chimney"), followed by little else – with both the front compartment and the hydration bladder taking up rooom, the remaining space in the “main” compartment fills up awfully fast. A thick fleece jacket can be crammed in on top, though this exerts a lot of stress on the zippers. (My survival packet is (in) a fanny bag, which I carry outside of the pack to avoid the possibility of losing it with my pack.)

I then slide my Hennessy hammock, in its snakeskins, through the haul loop so that it is centered. I then slide the ends down through the little “compression” straps on the side, around the bottom, back up through the “compression” straps on the other side and back through the haul loop. Then, I stuff the rolled up end coils of the hammock suspension rope into the haul loop along with the “treehugger” straps and pull the straps on the side tight. This fixes the hammock quite nicely. What's more, this does not seem to affect the pack’s balance in a negative way. I am quite happy about this.

I have not yet found a satisfactory way to attach my sleeping pad. As I must attach this to the outside as well, this setup quickly begins to look ridiculous. I guess I may really need a pack which is designed for overnighters. Or maybe my pad is just too big and fat (1.5 cm – ¾ in – thick evazote pad, 180 by 59 cm – 6 ft by 23 in).

In any event, in most cases the main compartment (as reduced by filled front compartment and bladder) ends up filled nearly to bursting (the zippers are large and tough, though, so I do not envision difficulties from that end). This infringes on the usefulness of the little side pouches. They are made from the same fabric as the pack, not elasticized nor with a box-shape cut. This means that putting a water bottle in there takes space from the main compartment – or, the way I pack my pack, it means that with the main compartment maxed out, a water bottle will not fit into a side pouch.
This does not make them entirely useless – three snack bars on one side, a snack bar and a map on the other still fit. I don’t need the pockets for water bottles – the bladder provides more readily accessible water than I need (from a position where it’s never frozen, too), so this does not concern me overly. MacPac, on their website, says the side pouches are meant "to carry your umbrella or walking pole". I carry neither, but they should suffice for this.

Summary:
An excellent day-to-day pack which doubles as a good sports and field pack for day hikes. When I feel like pushing beyond limits, I can even, with a really serious view to reducing pack weight and bulk, use it for overnighters. This pack has all the features I need while being rugged enough and yet lighter than most of the competing daypacks that I found, in what I consider to be this market segment. I am very happy with this pack and continue to use it daily, for casual use and most of my dayhiking.

Pros/Cons:
PROS: Well padded, light, tough. No hassles.
CONS: Seems smaller in use than the rated volume suggests. Side pouches are of limited use.

Possible Improvements:
I'd like to see the kind of elasticized side pockets on this pack which MacPac uses on some of its current "Urban/Travel" packs. To my mind, this would enhance its usefulness without adding undue weight or complexity.

Personal Biographical Information:
Name: André Corterier
Gender: M
Age: 33
Height: 1.85 m (6 ft 1 in)
Weight: 80 kg (175 lb)
Email: andreDOTcorterierATfreenetDOTde
Home: Bonn, Germany

Backpacking Background:
I began backpacking in my late teens using Europe’s "InterRail"-System – weight hardly mattered, as we were on trains a lot. I recently rediscovered backpacking and have started out slowly – single-day 15 mile (24 km) jaunts by myself or even shorter hikes in the company of my little daughter. I am getting started on longer hikes, as a lightweight packer and hammock-camper. I’ve begun upgrading my old gear and am now shooting for a dry FSO weight (everything carried From the Skin Out except food, fuel and water) of about 10 kg (22 lb) for three-season camping. Not quite there yet.

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