Hi all,
Bit green here so would appreciate any advice!
I'm looking for an adaptable kind of pack and am after any suggestions or advice that might help me narrow things down - I've been browsing here and elsewhere and now my head is swimming with leads so any suggestions will be helpful. If things match up the way I'm thinking, great, if not, maybe I'll get some things I haven't looked at.
The reason I want the adaptability is because I'm basically looking at two things
1) walking and camping with the kids, on track (or not thick bush, anyway), but carrying a fair bit of gear to lighten their load (essentially I take the tents, cooking gear, my own sleeping gear, some of the mats, food, and they take their own sleeping bag/gear, clothes, and whatever food I can squeeze into their small packs).
2 - multiday hard offtrack bushwalking by myself, where I want a balance between lightness and hardiness, and the ability to really compress it down so I'm not lugging around something that is bulkier than it needs to be, particularly width and height wise. I'm a bit worried about some of that ultralight material's durability and all the mesh pockets and such.
Such a thing might not exist of course. I appreciate the "get two" argument, but the bank balance says no, at least for the sake of argument. I have an ancient pack already which is large and fine for the kids stuff, if heavy, bulky and totally featureless. So in the end, the light but hardy kind of thing is probably the way to go - but it would be nice if I could find something that would fulfill both needs - that old thing weighs a bit.
Any ideas? Also open to other kind of solutions (like, some of these come with rain covers... will they offer much extra protection to your average ultralight material?)
Thanks!