(stock photo)
Greetings,
In late 2013 I started hearing rumors that Klymit, a company I have bought a fair amount of gear from and wrote some great reviews about (ref 1, ref 2, ref 3), were in the process of bringing a backpack to the market. I did not put a lot of trust in these rumors because it did not seem like Klymit would be the kind of company to bring a backpack to the market. They have partnered with a number of companies that make backpacks to supply their airframe support technology for makers of backpacks. This rumor changed when I was handed a Klymit Motion 35 in January of 2014 at the PCT Kickoff in Southern California.
I was briefly told about its features and to give it a go “if it looked like something that would work for me“, no strings attached. Having been involved in building a backpack for the last two years I did not really expect to get much, and to be honest, probably not any, use out of it. All of that changed when I found myself without a backpack for a three day hike I was invited to. My primary backpack was off getting some repair work, my prototype was off getting another few modifications done to it, another backpack I own was being used by a friend hiking the pct, and the last backpack I had sitting around was just too small. This left me wondering “hmm” but I recalled that Klymit backpack sitting in my gear room and went and grabbed it to see if I could get my gear into it, and more importantly, if it was even going to be a viable backpack for me.
