Osprey Xenon 70 Pack
May 23, 2009
OK, so we already posted one gal’s thoughts on the Xenon 85 pack, but I think it’s worthwhile to get another reviewer’s perspective on the Xenon line. I issued the 85 liter pack to a Geargal who used it for a trip to the Alaska Range, and I’ve been using the 70 liter version for various backpacking endeavors. I tend to not carry enough stuff to need a 70 liter pack, so I took my time in deciding what I thought of this one since I’m not used to those sorts of loads.
I first used this pack during a multi-day trip for a university backpacking class I teach. I bet you wish you could have gotten college credit for doing what you do all the time anyway, right? Well, now I get paid for doing it, so life is great! Anyway, since I was traveling with students, I knew they’d be slower than my usual pace and that I’d have to carry all that university-mandated safety gear, so it was a good chance to break in the Xenon 70. My first impression was that of the dozens and dozens of features on the pack. I love pockets and stash-places, but there were so many on the Xenon I really didn’t know what to do with half of them. There are so many buckles and straps and special organizational features, you won’t believe it. Since then I’ve schlepped the Xenon along on a few other trips, and my first impressions remain the same. I was hoping it would grow on me as it did the other reviewer, but sadly not.
Not to say that it’s not a well designed pack and might work really great for some folks. The sleeping bag compartment has a cover that folds up so you don’t have to waste space, which I like, but then why put the compartment in there in the first place? It just generates more straps and buckles. Aside from that, the 70 liter capacity makes for a quite impressively sized main pack, with two really handy crescent-shaped pockets on either side. Those pockets are winners. There’s also a top cap-style lid that converts into a fanny pack for day hikes. Again, kind of neat, but for a person like me, just makes more straps and more buckles and therefore more weight to carry. All those features add up when it comes to how much weight you’re really hoisting on your back. On the other hand, this pack is pretty light for a multi-day pack, so I guess they had some leeway to put more buckles on. Still, if it were me designing the pack, I would have stayed minimalist and kept it even lighter. Still more features: there are two lines of kind of slot-shaped holes on the outside of the pack, designed to allow more room by adding Osprey’s modular additions. I didn’t try these, because really, if I need more than 70 liters of stuff, I’m going to find a way to back out of the trip.
One of my favorite features are the zipper pulls. These are great. They are actual loops of tough, stiff-ish plastic over cord, and can easily be grabbed while wearing heavy gloves. Good thinking, Osprey. With all the straps on the pack, the designers also wisely made the compression strap red, so that you can find it amongst all the others. Good thinking!
My biggest struggle with the Xenon has been the fit. I’ve discussed it at length with Osprey, who swear up and down that this is the best-fitting pack out there. I have to disagree, but then again there are a number of modifications and customizations that one can make to this pack that I haven’t tried. You can heat mold the hip belt, though I found that after using it for almost a year, the belt molded to my hips anyway. You can also bend and shape the metal stays, which seems to me to be advanced-level pack fitting that I wasn’t up for. I really don’t think that either of those mods would help the fit trouble I had with the pack, which was that it always seemed to be pulling me backwards. The lumbar pad ended up just sitting on my sacrum and seemed to act as a lever to keep the load tipping backwards. I was able to adjust everything so that it was tolerable, but aside from the lumbar pad and the very top of the pack, the pack didn’t touch my back at all. It wasn’t screamingly uncomfortable, but it could be better, let’s put it that way. I’ve put this pack on a few other people and they’ve had similar complaints (though it is funny to watch them fumble with all the straps and features). One of my students has the 110 (!) liter version, and he had similar fit gripes as well. All I can think of is that perhaps this pack is geared towards one particular body type, and that type is not mine.
