The Hyperlite Mountain Gear Contour 35 is a water-resistant frameless backpack designed for thru-hiking by extra skilled backpackers carrying minimal gear. With 43.5L of whole quantity (35L inner and 6.5L exterior), it’s been stripped right down to a minimal function set to cut back its weight to 16.2 oz, or only a hair over one pound. It has six exterior pockets, so you possibly can retailer the gadgets or snacks you want through the day with out opening up the principle compartment. The Contour 35 additionally makes a pleasant day pack for longer hikes and peakbagging when it’s essential to carry additional insulation or protecting gear.
RELATED: 10 Greatest Ultralight Frameless Backpacks
Specs at a Look
- Weight: 16.2 oz (459g) – dimension medium
- Gender: Males’s
- Inner Quantity: 35 Liters
- Exterior Quantity: 6.5 Liters
- Pockets: Most important + 6
- Load lifters: No
- Hip belt Pockets: No
- Hydration system suitable: No
- Ice Axe Loop: Sure
- Colours: White or Black
- Supplies: Dyneema DCF, 100D Dyneema Gridstop, Dyeema Stretch Mesh
- Most really helpful load: 25 lbs
- Bear Canister Compatibility: BV425 and BV450 (horizontal), BV475 and BV500 (vertical)
The Contour 35 is a backpack finest fitted to ultralight backpacking with as much as 25 kilos of drugs, meals, and water. It’s made from Dyneema DCF and absolutely seam-taped, however it’s a easy roll-top backpack with few frills. It’s frameless, has a easy detachable webbing strap for a hip belt, shouldn’t be hydration suitable, doesn’t have a prime Y strap, and there’s no again padding behind the shoulder straps, so you need to fastidiously pack gadgets like bear canisters that may poke you within the again.
Backpack Storage and Group
The Contour 35 has a traditional roll-top that may be strapped to the edges like a dry bag or clipped collectively on the highest. The highest of the principle pack bag has a stiffener to facilitate rolling as a substitute of the Velcro closure Hyperlite used beforehand on their bigger packs. Velcro doesn’t get together with out of doors clothes, notably a fuzzy fleece like Polartec Alpha, so this can be a welcome enhancement.
What the Contour 35 lacks in options, it makes up for in six exterior pockets able to holding 6.5 liters of drugs and meals. There are two stretch pockets on the shoulder straps, two facet pockets, a entrance stretch pocket, and a backside pocket on the underside of the pack bag for holding snacks and trash. The pockets allow you to retailer every little thing you want through the day shut at hand, so that you don’t need to cease to open the principle compartment and dig round to search out stuff. Which means you possibly can maintain strolling continuous all day, which is how severe thru-hikers crush large miles.
The facet bottle pockets are deep sufficient to retailer tall bottles, like Smartwater bottles, in them, they usually have a easy compression strap above them if you happen to prefer to hike along with your water filter hooked up. The facet pockets are closely strengthened at their base to face up to abrasion and have elastic shock cords on the prime you could tighten to forestall the contents from falling out. Whereas I can attain again and pull a bottle out of the facet pockets, placing it again in could be a problem due to these elastic shock cords.
The shoulder straps have sewn-on pockets sized for holding electronics and small water bottles, as much as about 20 oz. When you’d quite use completely different pockets, the shoulder straps have daisy chains, which may function anchor factors. Personally, I like utilizing the shoulder strap pockets to retailer my Garmin inReach Mini2 and my iPhone since they supply simple and safe entry to each.
The entrance stretch pocket isn’t big, however it’s sufficiently big to retailer a light-weight shell or wind shirt, a moist water filter and reservoir, or a day’s price of meals. It’s made with a sturdy Dyneema Stretch mesh and has a buckle on prime that connects to the pack’s prime strap to maintain contents safe.
The Dyneema Stretch Mesh pocket on the underside of the pack has two openings: a big one on the facet that’s giant sufficient to stay your hand into and a small finger-sized one which can be utilized as a trash port to stay used snack wrappers into. Whereas these pockets have grow to be trendy on frameless backpacks, I’m not satisfied you need to retailer used snack wrappers in a pocket on the base of your pack, notably since their odor will appeal to bears and rodents, even after the wrappers are gone. I’m additionally skeptical whether or not Dyneema Stretch Mesh, made with nylon 66 and strengthened with Dyneema threads, is sufficiently abrasion-resistant for use on the backside of a backpack. However I assume time will inform.
Backpack Suspension
Being frameless and missing a load-bearing hipbelt, the burden of the Contour 35 and its contents relaxation utterly in your shoulders. Because the pack has no padding behind the shoulder straps, it have to be fastidiously packed to forestall sharp-cornered gadgets from poking you within the again when the pack is worn.
I take care of this by inserting a cut-down foam pad (Thermarest Z-lite Sol) inside the principle pack bag behind the shoulder straps to cushion my again. Sadly, this takes up invaluable inside house. A extra environment friendly design strategy is to incorporate an exterior pad pocket like that on the Gossamer Gear Kumo 36 or exterior pad bungees as on the Zpacks Nero 38 since they don’t use any inner quantity and may also be used as handy sit pads.
The Contour 35 hipbelt is a straightforward webbing strap that retains the backpack near your torso, notably if you’re fastpacking or scrambling. It’s simply detachable by unclipping it from its two anchor factors on the edges of the pack; nevertheless, you possibly can use it to carry a fanny pack at your waist for additional storage.
Attachment Factors and Compression
The Contour 35 doesn’t include a Y-strap, making it tougher to hold cumbersome gear, even a full foam pad, on prime of the pack. I can’t fathom the explanation for this omission when Hyperlight’s Waypoint 35, which is similar to the Contour 35, contains one.
That single prime strap additionally closes with a hook as a substitute of a daily plastic buckle…and takes a stunning quantity of dexterity to shut. That is “good” as a result of it discourages opening the principle compartment through the day and forces extra dependence on the exterior pockets. However that little hook is surprisingly tough to see if you happen to’re of an age the place you want studying glasses to see issues up shut…an accessibility function that the 20-somethings who designed the Contour 35 most likely failed to think about. A plastic buckle would have been higher, along with a Y-strap.
That mentioned, there are a number of different methods to lash gear to the skin of the Contour. Along with an ice axe loop and a easy shaft holder, the facet compression cords have line locs and buckles, making it simpler to lash objects to the facet of the pack even when carrying gloves. As well as, the facet straps used to lash the roll prime down may be linked over the entrance pocket, which may be helpful if you wish to lash a cumbersome foam pad there. Lastly, there are six small webbing loops within the perimeter seams of the entrance mesh pocket that you possibly can run cordage by way of and are helpful for drying moist laundry.
Comparable Ultralight Frameless Backpacks
Advice
The Hyperlite Mountain Gear Contour 35 is a streamlined, frameless backpack made with Dyneema DCF that weighs 16.2 oz. Designed for thru-hikers with minimal equipment, it’s loaded with exterior pockets so you possibly can hike all day with out having to cease and get gadgets out of the principle pack bag. Whereas the Contour 35 is completely satisfactory for that job, it has a number of quirks that make it considerably much less optimum when in comparison with different frameless ultralight backpacks. I feel the pack can be a a lot stronger contender if it had vest-style shoulder straps to stability the load throughout the chest along with the shoulders, a prime Y-strap, and an exterior pad sleeve or elastic twine to hold a pad on the pack’s exterior quite than utilizing inner storage for that function. Take a look at our 10 Greatest Frameless Ultralight Backpack Record for really helpful alternate options. If space for storing is much less of a precedence, the Contour 35 makes a pleasant day pack so long as you will get through the use of the exterior pockets and don’t must entry the principle compartment fairly often.
I’d additionally suggest trying on the Hyperlite Mountain Gear Waypoint 35 (23.5 oz), which is kind of much like the Contour 35 however extra versatile and a greater worth. It has a single (detachable) body keep, so it could possibly comfortably carry 5-10 extra kilos, a prime Y-strap, and an elective hip belt with hip belt pockets.
Disclosure: Hyperlite Mtn Gear donated a backpack for evaluation.
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