Backpackin'
Brownkatz & Brownkatz on Backpacking, Hiking and Camping.
Granite Gear to The Rescue
I got lucky, again.
This time, thanks to war.
This is about me wanting a pouch on my pack’s waist belt. I want to use the pouch to carry a camera, note book, pen, compass, maps, copies of trail guide pages and whatever else I want. I want the pouch where I want the pouch, not so far to the side that my swinging arm bumps against it and not so far forward it nearly hangs between my legs. I don’t want to be stuck with where someone else wants my pouch to be.
And I don’t want it to be a struggle to put on and off. In fact, I’d like to add and subtract as many varied size pouches as I want, depending on the trip I’m taking. And since my sewing skills are, um, let’s say primitive, I want someone else to see to all this for me.
And Granite Gear has.
Granite Gear has a tactical business (their tactical gear is distributed by SMG Tactical ) separate from their commercial business. Many makers of commercial outdoor gear do the same, such as Arc’teryx, Kelty and Kifaru . Granite Gear is so good at this they recently won a contract with the U.S. Special Operations Forces for 45,000 of GG’s CHIEF patrol pack.
(Photo courtesy of Granite Gear)
Granite Gear appears to have done quite a job on the CHIEF. At 5500 cubic inches, the thing is huge, yet only weighs just over 8 pounds despite being made out of bomb-proof 1000 denier Cordura®. It has load lifter straps that both pull the pack closer to the body and lift the shoulder straps up and away from the shoulders, making the pack far more comfortable just as in commercial packs. Yet the pack is low enough that a solder wearing a helmet could still lift his or her head and be able to fire a weapon, making them safer in combat.
Here’s what the Military Times had to say about the CHIEF.
“Knowing that nothing sells to the military like an impressive string of letters, the folks at Granite Gear came up with a new pack that is as sturdy as its acronym. The Composite Hybrid Interchangeable Ergonomic Framesheet (C.H.I.E.F.) uses a 3D-molded framesheet with three distinct zones of flexibility. That sounds good, but what counts is what happens when the designers load it with 100 pounds and toss it off a 35-foot railroad trestle onto the ground to test it out.
"Nothing happened.”
Naturally, few backpackers want to use military gear that tough. It’s just too heavy because it has to handle those incredible extremes of weight and abuse inherent in war. Soldiers need packs that can carry stuff like mortar rounds and that can survive being dropped from airplanes. But they also need gear that is flexible, that can be quickly and easily modified to fit whatever their next mission is. And they need to be able to add gear so that everything critical they need is quickly available, ideally according to the preferences of the individual solder.
Now, I wasn’t in the military and I‘ve heard lots of vets talk about how screwed up military gear can be. But it seems to me that this time the gear wizards at the United States Army Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center got it right. They invented, and patented, the PALS system, or Pouch Attachment Ladder System. This is one of those smack-your-head-and-say-“Of course!” kind of things. PALS are simply rows of daisy chains running horizontally. They’re just one-inch webbing strips sewn so they make a series of loops you can pass webbing or straps, or even cord, through. Military gear makers cover almost everything with them, which makes it super easy to add and subtract all kinds of stuff. You can see them all over the CHIEF patrol pack above.
Here’s a picture of PALS in action. This is Sgt. Daniel Winstead, of Meridian, Miss., a team leader assigned to Company B, 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Multi-National Division-Baghdad, on patrol in eastern Baghdad. Notice all the horizontal webbing, like daisy chains, all over his gear. As you can see, he has layered PALS-covered pouches large and small on each other. (Photo and caption information courtesy of the United States Army)
Military gear makers have also come up with a huge variety of ways to attach things using PALS. You can see many of them at Gear Reviews.net . You can even simply use some cordage.
GG put two PALS strips on the waist belts for their tactical gear, waist belts that are very much like those on their commercial packs. And when I needed to trade out the ultralight waist belt for my GG Nimbus Meridian pack for a larger size, I was lucky enough to get one with PALS webbing on it, which instantly solved my problem with how to attach my pouches. The PALS system avoids having to run the attachment under the waist belt, which can create a potential hotspot.
I emailed Dan Cruikshank, one of GG’s two founders.
“Yes,” he replied. “This is new on our hip belts, currently it is on our ultralight belts (and Vapor belts) and is being incorporated into all the styles of hip belt as we need to produce more. Right now, we have some belts with it, some not, but going forward we will produce all of our belts this way. We need some time to work through our old stock, so I can't guarantee every pack will ship with it...We keep the product lines separate, and we transfer ideas from developing products for both markets....we will definitely make some belt pouches for the hip belt. Our field testers are currently testing one such pouch.”
“The pocket will be available in stores next spring,” Cruikshank said “…A customer can request a PALS Belt, and after checking, most of our stock in Ultralight and Vapor belts is that way.”
He said he’d send me a pouch to test and now I feel like its Christmas Eve.
But there’s one thing. I imagine that without war someone, somewhere would have come up with PALS-type webbing for commercial backpacks. Maybe the backpacking geniuses at Granite Gear. But it’s an unfortunate aspect of our species’ history that many of our best technological advances are due to war. I wish it wasn’t true. I wish Sgt. Winstead didn’t have to go in harm’s way so I could have a picture describing what I want to help me enjoy myself. I hope he gets home safe.
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