All Day Carry Travel Backpack

I’ve used a lot of different ultralight backpacks over my years of wilderness long trail hiking, and frankly, I love them all. And I’ve used these same backpacks when walking Camino routes in Spain and Portugal, and a number of other hut to hut, and albergue to albergue routes elsewhere in the world. But this summer my wife, Katie, and I walked several weeks on the Island Trail, on Prince Edward Island in Canada, with Six Moon Design’s new Travel Pack, and then used it as luggage for several months more of non backpacking travel, and we’re sold. The suspension is terrific, as comfortable, and well balanced as any of the fine ultralight backpacks we’d carried in the past, with lots of cushioning and form fitting built in, yet at the end of the day, the whole thing opens like a fine piece of luggage, and we had instant access to whatever we needed without emptying the whole bag. It has so many compartments we got used to organizing our gear and clothing just as we had when using a traditional suitcase, except that this was a soft piece of luggage, with more little organizational spots, than I’d ever had in a suitcase, and certainly not in any of the backpacks I’d used. We used the organizing bags that Six Moon sells, as they fit perfectly into the main compartment, help organizationally, and also provide structure to the pack when carried.

Toward the end of summer on car travels, I’ve been using it with the straps zipped into their pockets, and it’s side handle for…

Overall I’m pretty happy with this bag and have been using it for over 2 months since getting it in the initial release. I’ve taken it for city and backpacking so can attest to both use cases:

The good:

- Excellent carry comfort! It’s definitely able to take very heavy loads and still feel very reasonable on my back. If you’re female then get the S-straps. I always had a laptop in the back panel but never felt the edges digging into my back which has been an issue with other bags before

- Material is water proof/resistant which gives me added assurance that it’s ok to take out on a rainy day with important gear inside

- Front stretchy pocket, top pocket and side water bottle / long gear bottle are really well designed and offer great expandability for dirty clothes, fast grab items and wide Nalgenes

Needs improvement:

- Laptop pocket in the back panel has many issues. The opening is just barely big enough to squeeze a MacBook 16” and it feels like I’m struggling every time. Due to the lightweight configuration there’s every little padding and the frame of the bag interferes with inserting and removing the laptop when the bag is fully loaded. The frame juts out into the pocket and causes the laptop to get stuck.

- Front pocket full length is just awkward. It’s a bit too long and narrow that I haven’t found a good use case for what to put into it without things getting lost. Personally I think it would’ve been better to make this a full open pocket with more…