The REI Traverse 32 is a flexible daypack designed for longer day hikes with options that lend themselves to four-season use. It’s a prime loader with a floating lid, a entrance stretch pocket, a aspect zipper in the principle compartment, and two tiers of aspect compression straps that can be utilized to strap a foam pad or snowshoes to the skin of your pack. As well as, the pack options aspect pockets that anybody can get water bottles out and in, a functionality shared by lots of REI’s different backpacks, together with the REI Flash Air 50.
- Gender: Males’s (Girls’s additionally obtainable)
- Weigh 2 lbs 9 oz
- Entry: prime, aspect
- Body: Inside, 360-degree wire body
- Pockets: 7
- Floating prime lid: Sure
- Load lifters: Sure
- Hip belt pockets: Sure
- Hydration Compatibility: Sure
- Rain Cowl: Sure
- Supplies: 300-denier recycled ripstop nylon
- Professionals: Straightforward-to-reach water bottle pockets, aspect zipper entry, pack mods(moveable compression straps)
- Cons: The sternum strap pops off and will be tough to reseat rapidly.
Backpack Storage and Group
The Traverse 32 is a top-loading backpack with seven pockets: a stretch entrance pocket, two water bottle pockets, two hipbelt pockets, and two pockets within the floating lid, providing you with numerous open and closed storage to prepare your gear.
- The entrance stretch pocket is principally made from stable cloth for elevated sturdiness. It has stretch aspect panels to allow enlargement whereas nonetheless offering drainage, and a prime webbing strap secures its contents.
- The aspect water bottle pockets are reachable as a result of they’re positioned a lot decrease and extra ahead behind the hipbelt as an alternative of up alongside the perimeters of the pack bag. This can be a signature characteristic on lots of REI’s packs, and I can’t perceive why different producers haven’t copied it. It’s that good!
- The hip belt pockets are giant, have beefy YKK zippers, and are coated with stable cloth for sturdiness. They’ll simply maintain a smartphone.
- The highest lid has two pockets: one on prime with a key fob and one beneath for a rain cowl. The highest lid is floating, which means that it may be raised or lowered with 4 webbing straps. This lets you safe gear to the pack beneath it, which is a superb overload functionality for carrying cumbersome gadgets like rope, a foam pad, or a bear canister.
The principle pack again additionally has a aspect zipper down the left aspect, making it very simple to extract gear buried deeply within the pack with out taking every little thing out by means of the highest. Aspect zippers like this are sometimes discovered on winter packs and higher-volume backpacks, together with searching packs, they usually’re an important comfort.
Backpack Body and Suspension
The Traverse 32 is an inner body backpack with a 360-degree perimeter wire body that offers the pack a vigorous but supportive really feel. The hipbelt is completely connected and anchored on to the body, so that you get a really responsive carry with wonderful load switch to the hips and lumbar area of the pack.
The pack’s load lifters are anchored on the prime of the body so you possibly can pull the pack nearer to you and align it higher along with your hips, whereas the pack’s sternum straps slide down a entrance rail, making adjusting very simple. Sadly, that sternum strap makes it very tough to connect accent pockets to the shoulder straps as a result of there aren’t any attachment factors (vertical or horizontal) beneath the hose keeper loops larger up.
As well as, and this can be a showstopper, the sternum strap sliders are likely to pop off their rails when torqued, rendering the sternum strap ineffective. You may reseat them with a bit apply, however it’s tremendous annoying, and there’s no actual workaround wanting stitching on a alternative strap along with your industrial stitching machine. It’s laborious to consider that 1) this pack made it out of manufacturing with such a major usability flaw and a pair of) that it continues to be offered with out modification. This downside can also be distinctive to this backpack – different producers efficiently use the identical sternum strap adjustment.
Exterior Attachments and Compression
The Traverse 32 has daisy chains and webbing loops sewn into the aspect seams of the pack, permitting you to maneuver its aspect compression straps up or down alongside the size of the pack. This makes it very simple to reconfigure the aspect straps to hold cumbersome gear, like snowshoes or a foam pad, and lash them to the perimeters of the pack. REI calls these movable compression straps “pack mods”, and gives them on a number of of their different backpacks, though it’s a characteristic you possibly can usually implement utilizing cords and a few cordage on many backpacks.
Evaluation (Not a advice)
The REI Traverse 32 is a well-designed backpack in order for you one for higher-mileage hikes or winter mountain climbing and snowshoeing. Its bottle pockets are exceptionally simple to make use of, and the aspect zipper entry removes plenty of frustration when utilizing a top-loading backpack with a prime lid pocket or a roll prime, the place you need to unpack to seek out something inside utterly. Nonetheless, as I famous above, the sternum strap is susceptible to popping off, tough to reseat, making the backpack fatally flawed, in my view. There are two comparable backpacks that I like to recommend as an alternative: the Deuter Speedlite 30 and the Gregory Zulu 30, which have comparable options and will also be used year-round.
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