Hipbeltless packs are normally not part of how I hike. As a Backpacker editor, I’m blessed with a pretty deep gear closet, and I use most of the packs in there regularly: Burly conventional packs for gear-intensive winter and family trips, frameless ones for personal outings where I can pack as light as I want, and lightweight backpacks with a frame for anything in between. But like leaving my shelter at home or using my spork to dig a cathole, ditching the hipbelt always seemed like one of those cuts that took things a step too far.
After taking Volpi’s FastPack 30 on the trail, though, I’m reconsidering my stance. This lightweight pack—a pound flat for the Ultra version—sat comfortably on my shoulders thanks to its vest-style carry and had enough organization that I was always able to find what I needed without fumbling. Hipbeltless packs still have their downsides, and we’re looking forward to testing the FastPack 30 more. In the meantime, here are my thoughts after my first trip with it; stay tuned for our full review.
Transcript
I like to go light, but I’m not the kind of person who will cut weight at any cost. There are certain things I’m not usually willing to give up when I go backpacking, and one of them is a hipbelt. I’ve used frameless packs in the past and liked them, but I haven’t used many packs without a hipbelt that I’ve really been willing to take out on my own time.
But right now, I’m on the Ice Age Trail in Wisconsin, and I am trying out a pack that I think, for one of the first times, I would use on a personal trip, and that is the Volpi FastPack. Volpi is a company from Mexico. It was made by a couple of thru-hikers who wanted to make the kind of gear that they’d like to use. And the FastPack is a really good example of that. It’s a fairly compact, frameless pack. It’s got a vest-style carry, but no hipbelt. And I found it really comfortable to use so far, surprisingly comfortable for a pack with no hipbelt.
Because it has a vest-style carry, it has pretty good storage on the shoulder straps. I’ve got a water bottle, a soft flask, in each pocket. It has a generous stuff pocket in the back where I’ve put some of the stuff I expect to need today, I’ve stuck my extra layers. And it has some side pockets good for carrying whatever. It sits fairly high on your back because it is on your shoulders rather than sitting on your hips.
There are obviously a couple of tradeoffs. With no hipbelt, it gets a little harder to carry weight, since it’s all on your shoulders. These wide straps distribute it well, but there’s a limit to how much they can do. There’s the capacity issue—this would not be a great pack for long carries. We’re out for three days, so I haven’t had to bring too much. And we also, critically, have pretty abundant water. I probably wouldn’t bring this pack to the desert or anywhere where I expected to have to carry a lot. I’ve carried two gallons of water at a time in a frameless pack, and that’s pretty rough even with a hipbelt. I wouldn’t necessarily want to do it with this one. But for trips where you’re prioritizing moving fast and don’t have to carry a lot, this is a pretty comfortable option.
One downside of using this pack is it does have a roll-top closure. It can be really inconvenient to get stuff in and out, so it’s best if your strategy is generally to pack your pack in the morning and not really open it the rest of the day. I’m hiking with a hip pack, where I’ve got my lunch and most of the stuff I expect to need. The stuff pocket in the back is where I’ve kept my rain jacket, my grid fleece, stuff I may need, but I’m probably not going to need constantly or quickly.
Obviously, as a frameless pack, you’re going to want to be really careful in how you pack this. I took the time to arrange my stuff pretty carefully to avoid barreling, and used my sleep system to eat up the extra space, so it’s sitting pretty comfortably on me right now.
There are some good attachment points on the pack for keeping some gear that you may not want to put inside the pack. You can see I’ve got my sleeping pad sitting on the top. There’s a really easy buckle and strap closure to put it there. And I’m not using it right now, but there are also nice attachment points for trekking poles, if you don’t want to use your trekking poles for a while.
All in all, this is a really nice pack with good organization, and it sits more comfortably than you would think.
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