Superior Wilderness Designs Rugged Long Haul Review

@Art – The 34″ hip belt has 34″ of padding. Sounds like you would want the 34″. I have about a 36″ waist and it is approximately 32″ from from one illiac crest to the other side. I have the 34″ hip belt.

@Iago, in the photos of your review the pack looks like it is riding fairly low and the straps wrapping around your shoulders quite a bit. I suspect that may be contributing to your shorter strap lengths. The load lifter straps look almost level. If you look on the SWD website at one of the Long Haul pages, Brandon is wearing the pack and the top of the frame is above his shoulders quite a bit such that the load lifter straps are at more of an angle.

I have a Wendigo (now Wolverine) large torso. My torso is about 21.5″ and I have a 46″ chest with plenty of strap length.

You would need to contact SWD. I had tubular stays made for another pack that happen to fit my Wendigo. The tubular stays are a bit stiffer than the flat bar aluminum and about 3-4 ounces lighter.

Keen eyes Bob! Iago either has the torso length set too short, or he needs to go up a size on the torso length. He may need our XL shoulder straps as well which are 3″ longer than our standard shoulder straps.

The fact that the torso length is short on him is also the main contributing factor to the pack not being totally comfortable up at 38lbs. If he either set the torso length longer or sized up he’d almost certainly be able to take the pack up to 40lbs and beyond without experiencing any shoulder pain.

@Thomas W, FWIW I used a SWD Rugged LH 50 for most of my trips in the Sierra last season, which included many miles of off trail scrambling across boulders, scree, and talus. Up and down many class 2-3 cross country passes. This pack was essentially made for conditions like this.

@SWD, for the tubular stays, will I be able to (gently) bend them to better conform to my back, as I can with flat stays?

thanks

I agree that a taller frame and thus, effective load lifters, makes a huge impact on carrying comfort. However, a pack too tall interferes when I tilt my head back, like when scrambling up a pass, and can throw off my balance. So, it’s a compromise and with my 19.25″ torso, a size medium torso Long Haul w/ 22″ frame stays, works pretty well. I debated going up to the 24″ frame, but I’m sticking with the 22″ for now.

It’s pretty easy to bend the tops of the frame stays away from your head a bit to increase noggin clearance and still offer good load lifter function. But yes, it’s hard to have it all.

I like to do a lot of off-trail scrambling so I’m not comfortable with attaching too much gear on the outside of my pack. I tried to do that once on my kakwa with the y-strap and the canister fell off! I also don’t want it to get beat up on rocks,

Totally agree on that liter volume. Skurka’s Flex Capacitors were designed this way to fit the BV500 horizontally. The original 40-60L fits it, but it’s a tight squeeze due to the frame angle, and it puts some pressure on the fabric on the sides. Luckily BVs have curved, smooth edges. With the 60-75L Flex it easily goes in there. For me the ideal fit horizontally is on top of some light gear at the bottom, and the canister sitting in the middle against the arc of my back. So even if tapered at the bottom if there was that 42-43″ circumference about 6-10 inches up from the bottom it would be great.