Long Term Report

Long Term Report
Six Moon Designs Comet Pack
November 30, 2005

Manufacturer: Six Moon Designs
URL: http://www.sixmoondesigns.com
MSRP: $180 US (with optional stays)
Year Model: 2005
Listed Weight: 27 ounces/765 grams, with optional stays (included for this test)
Tested Weight: pack with stays: 26.7 ounces/757 grams
                            pack w/out stays: 22.1 ounces/627 grams
                            stays alone: 4.6 ounces/130 grams
                            detachable hipbelt: 4.5 ounces/128 grams
                            pack w/out stays or hipbelt: 17.6 ounces/499 grams
Capacity:   main packbag 2600 cubic inches/42.5 liters
                   extension collar 450 cubic inches/7 liters
                   external mesh pockets 650 cubic inches/10.5 liters
                   total capacity 3700 cubic inches/61 liters

Tester Name: Colleen Porter
Gender: female
Age: 30
Height: 5'8"/1.73 m
Weight: 140 lb/62 kg
Email address: tarbubble at yahoo dot com
Location: Orange County, CA

Backpacking Experience: I have been hiking for fifteen years, backpacking for nine. I mostly hike on established trails – bushwhacking is rarely planned. I like gear to be simple and light, and I do make some of my own equipment. On my own I pack pretty light (about thirteen lb/6 kg base weight) and am always trying to get lighter, but I am often on family trips with my husband and two young sons, so the weight goes up. My three-season backpacking haunts are the San Gabriels, the Sierra Nevada, and the Grand Canyon, and winters find me in the Mojave and Colorado deserts.

Product Description: A semi-frameless, top-loading, lightweight backpack. A folded sleeping pad can be placed in a specially designed interior pocket in order to provide a rudimentary framesheet. The Comet's frame/suspension/harness can be altered to suit the user's desire - the stays and the hipbelt are removable. The exterior features three large mesh pockets, two ice axe/tool attachment loops, and a drybag-style closure. Please see my Initial Report for a much more detailed description of the Comet's features.

Field Information: Testing has taken place exclusively in southern California. I have used the Comet at elevations ranging from sea level to over 8000 feet/2438 meters. Weather has ranged from cool, cloudy, and damp, to hot and dry. Trails have ranged from smooth & maintained to eroded and rocky. Temperatures have been well over 100 F/56 C and down around the high 30's F/21 C. The Comet was used as a daypack and as luggage on a week-long campout on the California coast, exposed to the blazing sun every day and the damp ocean fog every night. It has been used backpacking on two separate trips along the Pacific Crest Trail in the San Gabriel Mountains, on a trip into the Mecca Hills (in the Colorado Desert), and again as luggage and a daypack in Joshua Tree National Park. It has also been used on dozens of short local day hikes, with loads ranging from fifteen pounds (6.8 kg) to over thirty-five pounds (15.8 kg), in varying suspension configurations. One of these day hikes was a partial bushwhack through a local slot canyon, where I had the chance to use the Comet in waist-deep water with a drybag as a pack liner.

Performance: I can, with total confidence, say that I have pushed this pack to its limit. I have used it in every configuration available, with four different sleeping pads acting as the framesheet at different times. Those pads were a six-section Z-Rest, a Bozeman Mountain Works Torsolite pad, a Therm-A-Rest Prolite 3 Short, and a Therm-A-Rest LE Short (a discontinued model that is 2 in/5 cm thick). I have carried pathetically light loads in it, and I have overloaded it to the point that the waistbelt left marks and my collarbones were sore for two days. Most of my loads were in between these two extremes. I'm going to list important features of the pack, as well as overall considerations, and go over them individually.

The Pad Pocket/Pad-Based Frame. This is a good feature, but on its own it absolutely does not replace a framesheet. It is a great improvement over other frameless rucksacks I have tried, in that it contains the pad and makes it into something much closer to a frame than it would be otherwise. I wish the webbing strap that closes over the top of the pocket was just a little longer - I tried folding my pads creatively and liked the results, but the strap was too short to close over some of these arrangements. In conjunction with the hipbelt and stays, the Pad Pocket suspension is almost as good as a framesheet, but the overall suspension of the Comet is definitely, absolutely unsuitable for loads of 40 lb/18 kg, and those weights are well over Six Moon's recommended limit of 35 lb/15.8 kg. When I pushed the Comet to 40 lb/18 kg on our last family trip (at one point carrying 3 days' worth of food and over 2 gallons/7.5 liters of water), the pack was incredibly uncomfortable. Even with loads as light as 20 pounds/9 kilograms, I always preferred to at least use the belt, as the Comet did an excellent job of transferring most of the weight onto my hips. I don't think I'm quite cut out for beltless packs, as my shoulders invariably start to hurt if I carry anything approaching 15 pounds/6.8 kilograms in a beltless pack. Adding the stays prevented the load from bending the pack as the weight pulled down. My favorite way to use the Comet was with the full suspension in place - pad in the pocket, belt on, and stays in. As I said in my Field Report, I'll happily pay the penalty of carrying an extra 9.1 ounces/258 grams in exchange for the tremendous improvement in comfort that those features provide.

Adjustable Torso Length. This is an area that could do with some improvement. Making the adjustments is easy and intuitive enough, but there are some irritations and side effects to the adjustability. The irritation is that the webbing which feeds through the slider is just barely long enough to feed through so that the sewn-over end of the webbing catches on the slider in order to stay in place. This makes it maddening to try and feed through - every time I did, I struggled to get the webbing fed through just one millimeter more, so that the webbing end would catch on the back of the slider and stay in place. If I gave up and didn't get the end of the webbing fed all the way through, the webbing would invariably slip out when my gait became a bit bouncy (for example, on steep downhills), and then the pack would immediately slump down and all the weight would shift most uncomfortably onto the tops of my shoulders. My other complaint about the adjustment system is that when I wore the Comet over just a sport bra, the adjustment system rubbed against my skin and began irritating me. I never got much more than sore red marks, my skin never broke, but I never hiked in just a bra for more than an hour or so. I put my shirt back on because of the irritation from the adjustment system - it never presented a problem as long as I kept my shirt on, but I was concerned that the irritation would become worse..

Drybag Closure. I have mixed feelings about it. Since the Comet does not have a top lid of any kind, I like that the pack has a more secure closure than just a simple drawstring with a cordlock. But the Velcro can sometimes be difficult to line up properly, and any even vaguely fuzzy items will snag on it as I'm loading the pack. I definitely think the drybag closure is an improvement over simpler closures, but I'm still not entirely crazy about it. Maybe I'm just too hung up on pack lids. I wish the top strap, the webbing strap that snaps over the top of the closure, was just a little bit longer - an inch or two.

Hydration. When I used the Comet as a daypack, that is to say when it wasn't packed full and tightly, I preferred to carry water in bottles that I placed in the side pockets. Having a heavy water bottle slumped at the bottom of the pack became bothersome, as the weight was too low and threw off my balance just a little bit. When I had the Comet packed full and tightly, this ceased to be a problem, as I could simply wait to add the bladder until I had the pack halfway full - the items that were already in the pack prevented the bladder from slumping down to the bottom. I always placed bladders in the Pad Pocket. The ports for the hydration tube are too small. Feeding the mouthpiece through the ports was always frustrating, and you can forget about using a mouthpiece cover of any kind - it won't fit through.

Exterior Mesh Pockets. Great. Fantastic. Love 'em. I can jam them full of stuff when I need to, and when I don't need them they lay reasonably flat. If I really overstuff them, any small items near the top can wiggle out, but it was a rare time when I needed to stuff them THAT full. My only irritation is that the compression straps have to run over the center pocket, but there's nothing that can be done about that and it simply has to be worked around.

Lumbar Pad. Six Moon says the lumbar pad will "enhance back ventilation." I never felt overly hot while using the Comet (well, nothing that stripping off my shirt didn't solve), so it seems to ventilate well. Certainly better than any other ultralight (frameless) pack I have used, and this is absolutely due to using the Pad Pocket in conjunction with the lumbar pad. Even when I used the Comet without stays or belt, it didn't cling to my back as much as my other frameless packs.

As a Daypack. Not ideal, but serviceable. Loads with some bulk carry better, even with the compression straps tightened up. Unless packed tightly, I can't recommend using a bladder system - I preferred water bottles in the side pockets. The problem there, for lazy folks like me, is that I had to stop and at least partially remove the pack in order to access the water. Also, the one shortcoming in using it as a daypack out of a base camp is that it carries poorly unless you use the sleeping pad as a frame, which is only an irritation if you're lazy like me and don't like the fuss of folding and unfolding your pad every day when you already have camp set up.

Small Details/Miscellaneous. I never carried an ice axe. I used the axe loops to carry hiking poles and a Golite Dome umbrella. I simply twisted the loop to the appropriate tightness, placed the item in the loop, and then secured it with the additional Velcro strap. I like the little interior pocket - very handy for car keys and other tiny items. In my Field Report I mentioned that there were tiny burrs on the plastic sliders at the bottom of the shoulder straps, which bothered my arms when they occasionally brushed against them, but there was really only one hike when these caused any problem at all, so it's possible that I was just extra-sensitive that day.

Durability. The Comet has held up very well over the last six months. As I noted in my Field Report, some of the stitching has come undone where the extension collar and the packbag are sewn together, but this hasn't progressed significantly. There are two rows of stitching, so the seam has not opened up. I can find no major signs of wear or tear - no fraying, unraveling, rips or snags.

Summary. I like the Comet a lot. It has definitely taken first place amongst my lightweight packs. I have packs that weigh less, but they're nowhere near as comfortable as the Comet. I have a number of fiddly complaints, but this is a new model and none of my complaints affect the overall usefulness of the Comet. My biggest concern is the torso adjustment system irritating my skin when I'm shirtless. It's not a perfect pack, but it has a lot of good features, carries comfortably as long as it's not overloaded, and in its heaviest form still weighs just one pound eleven ounces (757 grams)!

Things I Like

Versatility - from overnight pack to ultralight week-long loads
Capacity - the exterior pockets are deceptively large
Drybag closure is more secure than a drawstring closure
Exterior mesh pockets - durable and VERY useful
Pad Pocket fits most pads
"Key pocket" inside packbag
Compression straps are thin but effective
It's a dang fine-looking pack

Things I Don't Like So Much

Drybag closure - fuzzy items catch on the Velcro
No hydration bladder pocket - bladder slumps to the bottom of the pack
Pad Pocket closure strap is too short - it won't close over certain pads
Torso length adjustment webbing is barely long enough
If hiking shirtless or in a bra, torso length adjustment hardware will rub and irritate skin
Sternum straps slip down too easily when opened
Shoulder strap webbing is very difficult to adjust while hiking - loosening or tightening
Ports for hydration tube are too small - difficult to get mouthpiece through

Thank you BGT, and especially Six Moon Designs, for the opportunity to test this unique pack.

Read more reviews of Six Moon Designs gear
Read more gear reviews by Colleen Porter

Reviews > Packs > Frameless Backpacks and Day Packs > Six Moon Designs Comet > Colleen Porter > Long Term Report

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