Bullet Pack

Rock climbing while wearing a pack is never ideal. Who likes to fight through chimneyswhile making loud scraping sounds with your pack and getting snagged on every little knob? The Bullet Pack takes a lot of the misery out of wearing a pack while rock climbing. It rides nice and high on your back and has such a narrow profile that you'll barely even notice it's there.

I use my Bullet Pack for long day-hikes/climbs in the mountains, for lowland multi-pitch adventures, and occasionally for long trail runs. There's enough room in the Bullet Pack for running shoes, food, a jacket, water, and a camera. If you're climbing at your limit, and you need to take the pack off, it's easy to haul. It doesn't have a lot of unnecessary straps and is very sleek in its design. Overall, this is an excellent specialty pack....and cheap too!

Not a bad little pack. The pack works well when I am carrying light clothing and gear. It is not very bulky and fits comfortably.



However, I do not like the way the pack "flops" while climbing with any heavy items like water bottles or pro. With these items the center of gravity is to high and away from my back making it feel a little cumbersome.



Other than that it is just fine and serves it purpose.

For years I used the MountainSmith Tour lumbar (fanny) pack for skiing and general travelling around town, however, in early 2002 I picked up a Bullet Pack and it has completely replaced the Tour pack for everything and more:

• Climbing: For climbs that require double rope rappels, this thing is great. I have stuffed in a 9mm/60m rope, camera, and 32oz bottle of Gatorade. This basically fills up the main compartment of the pack leaving the front compartment for energy bars, keys, etc. The daisy chain is great for clipping rock/approach shoes. Also, the 1 inch waist belt is easy enough to adjust that when I'm working a chimney I can loosen it and push the pack on to the side of my body if needed. I've never had any problems accessing gear on my harness.
• Skiing: I haven't used this for BC skiing yet but my preliminary tests indicate that this can easily hold a Life-Link IIID polycarbonate shovel. The short handle will stick about 10 inches out of the top of the pack. I recommend leaving the handle attached to the blade since the handle will stick out by itself (only about 2 inches) but then there's nothing to keep it from sliding out of the pack while skiing. Even with the shovel, most of the volume is still available for other backcountry gear.

For me, the only downsides to this pack is that sometimes I wish it had compression straps and that it doesn't hold books as well as the more rectangular the MountainSmith. The lack of compression straps hasn't bothered me that much but if it does, I'll just sew one on. I also use a screwgate VersaLink to keep the main compartment zippers sealed when climbing/skiing.