America’s Best Backpacking and Outdoor Adventures
By Michael Lanza
Choosing a daypack for hiking can seem overwhelming when you see the dozens of choices available today, which range all over the map in terms of volume, weight, carrying capacity, features, and cost—as well as fit and comfort. Look no further. This freshly updated review spotlights the best daypacks for hiking and offers expert buying tips that explain the subtle differences between packs to help you find the right one for your own adventures.
Daypack
Black Diamond Pursuit 15
$150, 15L/915 c.i., 1 lb. 7 oz./652g (men’s medium)
Sizes: men’s and women’s S-L
blackdiamondequipment.com
From dayhikes up to 16 miles with spurts of running on trails in my local foothills to steep, hard dayhikes from Yoho National Park in the Canadian Rockies to New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the Pursuit 15 struck an unusually effective balance between traditional hiking daypacks and running vests that’s most useful to avid dayhikers and mountain scramblers moving fast and light.
Ski Touring Pack
Black Diamond Dawn Patrol 32
$200, 30L/1,831 c.i., 2 lbs. 9 oz./1.2 kg (S/M)
Sizes: S/M and M/L (32L/1,953 c.i.)
blackdiamondequipment.com
When ski touring or riding in the backcountry, besides our skis or board, our pack becomes the piece of gear we interact with the most—and we place competing demands on a ski touring pack: We want it light and comfortable for the up and the down but to also have easy, quick access and critical organization and features. On many days of backcountry ski touring, I found the Black Diamond Dawn Patrol 32balances those demands well and excels for backcountry and side country tours that involve more minimalist capacity needs.
Ultralight Daypacks Black Diamond Trail Blitz 12 $50, 12L/732 c.i., 6.5 oz. One size backcountry.com REI Flash 18 $40, 18L/1,100 c.i., 9 oz. One size rei.com When considering whether to carry a light daypack or summit pack for side hikes or peakbagging on a backpacking trip, I’d normally weigh the length of the side hikes—i.e., how far I’d have to …
Daypack
Black Diamond Magnum 20
$90, 20L/1,220 c.i., 1 lb. 5 oz.
One unisex size
Moosejaw.com
Strip away all that’s not absolutely necessary in gear and the result often is something you use over and over again. From a 23.5-mile, rim-to-rim dayhike across the Grand Canyon and a 13-hour, mostly off-trail dayhike of around 20 miles in Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains, to shorter dayhikes in Zion National Park, as well as a seven-mile trail run-hike outside Ketchum, Idaho, and rock climbing at Idaho’s City of Rocks (carrying just water on the run and climbs), I kept slipping BD’s Magnum 20 onto my back—just for its simplicity and, of course, because it weighs barely more than half as much as a liter of water.