Turns out, kids can learn a thing or two from how backpackers meticulously load their packs. 
Maybe there’s a market for internal frame school packs? After all, what could benefit from more load support than school textbooks.
Author Archive for Dave
After ranting the other day on pack suspension (really, it is the most important thing in a backpack), we were super psyched this morning to log on to Alpinist’s web site and find out that mountain guide Aimee Barnes, who put the Gregory Z30 to the carry test (she says she averages 200-plus days a year carrying a pack), awarded it five stars, bestowing Alpinist’s prestigous Mountain Standards award.
Alpinist obviously has a different take on equipment testing, since they use mountain guides who are working day-in and day-out in the gear to decide on the ratings in their tests. That, along with the fact that mountain guides are notoriously picky about the gear they use, and very specific about the feature sets they want on gear, makes this a different animal than some of the other gear tests out there.
Barnes says one of the big criteria in her tests was overloading the Z30, which Gregory rates as able to comfortable carry up to about 25 to 30 pounds of gear (which is a good bit for a 30-liter pack), with 35 pounds of gear. Ah, yes, again, the special demands of a mountain guide, like schlepping around particularly heavy loads. She wanted to put Gregory’s claims about its Jet Stream DTS suspension to the test. Her take?
“The system carried better than any other pack I’ve owned. My back stayed dry. And true to Gregory’s claim, the suspension system support automatically adjusted each time I added or decreased my pack weight. It felt like an extension of my body.”
Doesn’t get much better than that.
Thought we’d share a good review we got on a respected UK-based outdoor blog.
After logging many miles, the tes
ter’s conclusion: ‘The carry is the important thing, and here it’s right on the money.’ We couldn’t have said it any better.
The Gregory philosophy has been and continues to be that a couple of extra ounces in the right spot (the suspension) for the right reason (better load-transfer, which means better carrying, which means more comfort at the end of the day) can make your bag carry that much better over the span of long days on the trail. And that will go a lot farther toward energy savings and feeling better at the end of each day than saving weight at all costs.
It’s always cool when a brand inspires loyalty.
At Gregory, we get all kinds of customer feedback, from people looking fo
r a replacement buckle to those who have suggestions about how to improve a pack. But no doubt the coolest for us are the e-mails from people who bought a pack 15, 20 or 25 years ago, and they’re still using it and still loving it, even with all the technical advances in the industry, and at Gregory, over the years. Lets us know that the seed was sound.
Here’s a photo from our friend Lee Crislip, taken by his hiking buddy Bruce Cressler, who called customer service with a question recently, and who owns an iconic and groundbreaking Gregory Pack, the Cassin, that he bought 20 years ago and is still using today. In this 2002 photo, he’s hiking in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, with Roaring Fork Mountain in the background.
It’s good grounding for us to remember what inspired it all in the first place - to get out there. Thanks Lee.
Hey everyone … my name is Joe Kinder. I am a Gregory Packs athlete and an avid climber of the ROCKS!!!. Actually I am a professional climber. I am always asked, ”what’s that mean, you compete and win?”, “how are you professional?, Do you guide people up mountains?”, “what does it involve?” Yeah! It really is a funny profession, but compare it with skateboarding, snowboarding, and any other professional sport. I am an athlete first and I am a businessman second. The climbing part is the primary part of my life … that is THE 
most important thing. I am living my dream MAN!!!
Gregory asked me to do some blogs periodically. I’m PSYCHED to share the life I live with the world… Continue reading >>
Here’s a cool thing. If you’re looking for a random piece of advice as relates to hiking, how to do this or that, you might check out HikeHacker.
A new site put up by Tom Mangan, who runs the excellent Bay Area hiking blog Two-Heel Drive, HikeHacker seeks to tap into the co
llective knowledge of the hiking community by encouraging people to post tips on all things related to hiking.
The site’s only a couple of months old, but so far a selection of posts include entries on how to protect and strengthen your ankles for hiking, how to avoid getting caught in a lightning storm, how to wash your down sleeping bag and how to keep your first aid kit up to date.
Looks to be the start of what could be a good clearing house of information. If you’ve got some potentially useful hiking info, log on and share.
We thought we’d share this great photo of John Sears, Gregory’s Director of New Product Development, a) because he’s one of the mind
s behind a lot of great ideas at Gregory, including helping co-develop the new Bio-Sync suspension we talked about a few posts ago, and b) because it looks like he’s spinning tunes from the DJ booth, not designing packs.
What is he doing? Talking on Skype to Harry Kondo, one of Gregory’s key partners in product development and distribution in Japan. Among many other things he does day-to-day, John works closely with Harry to make sure the products that Gregory designs specifically for Japan and other Asian markets make it to the shelves as envisioned, and Skype’s certainly become a helpful tool for working between offices on opposite sides of the world.
Those shades must be so that things look like Skype sounds.
Now cue up some soul, my man.
Gregory’s headed to Madagascar.
Starting Aug. 23, we’ll be sponsoring a group from Slovakia looking to put up a new route on the Tsaranoro Massif in t
he Central part of the country. Not a place you think of generally for climbing – unless you’re Lynn Hill, Beth Rodden, Hari Berger or a few other big names from the climbing world who’ve taken part in expeditions there. But that definitely speaks to the international appeal of the rock.
The names here aren’t quite as well-known in the U.S. climbing scene, but they’ve got the resumes to walk the talk on their goal of putting up a new route on the remote 2,400 vertical-foot granite 
wall.
The group includes Slovakian Dusan Beranek, Slovakia’s best-known big-wall climber and veteran of expeditions to Greenland, Chile, Peru and hard climbs in the Italian Dolomites, Yosemite and Crotia, Richi Nyeki, Beranek’s partner on many of those climbs, and Verdon Tomajko, a native of Slovakia who now lives in the U.S. and has climbed all around the world.
Along with establishing a new climb, over the four weeks they’ll be there, the group will also be filming the trip for a documentary to submit to some of the many international mountain film festivals around the world. When the film hits, keep your eyes peeled for an Alpinisto or a Z30.
It’s been radio silence, uh, I mean monitor silence here in blogland for the last week. The reason? The twice annual pilgrimage that is Outdoor Retailer, where pretty muc
h everyone who works in the outdoor industry congregates for six days in Salt Lake City to see all of next year’s products and, if you’re lucky, do a little recreating in the Wasatch. (Not really.)
Pretty much the entire Gregory team heads out to the show. Here’s a few photos of the booth and a few faces from Gregory. At left, Kristin and George wait for the coffee to kick in at the start of day two. And below, Steph talks … packs.
And upon arriving back, we were psyched to see the Deva 60 earn a stellar review on Outside Magazine’s blog, where they’re ramping up the gear reviews. It’s during longer trips like these where Continue reading >>
At its core, Gregory has always been about creating backpacks - and more precisely, backpack suspension - that lets you concentrate on what it is you’re doing outside rather than the weight that’s on your back. 
Now, Gregory’s getting ready to raise the bar a couple of notches in lighter trail packs.
Usually retailers get first crack at seeing all the new technology at the Outdoor Retailer show, where the gear for the next season is debuted each summer and winter. This time, we thought we’d let the Gregory community have the first look as we head 
into the OR show here in a few days.
The suspension’s called Bio-sync, and what’s unique about it is that Gregory’s designers looked to bio-mimicry to design it, essentially studying the way human tendons work during activities like running, hiking and cycling to create a system that ebbs and flows more with the body’s movements.
So how’s it work? First off, it’s worth noting that this is a suspension designed specifically for smaller, lighter packs that are used in more active endeavors like trail running, day hiking, mountain biking, ultras, etc. Given that it’s for packs with smaller loads, this suspension is much more about having the pack mimic and move with your body than achieving load transfer through the spine and hips, as you want with bigger packs. Continue reading >>