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 high loader with a floating lid, a entrance stretch pocket, a facet zipper in the primary compartment, and two tiers of facet 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 facet pockets that anybody can get water bottles out and in, a functionality shared by a lot of REI’s different backpacks, together with the REI Flash Air 50.
- Gender: Males’s (Ladies’s additionally accessible)
- Weigh 2 lbs 9 oz
- Entry: high, facet
- Body: Inside, 360-degree wire body
- Pockets: 7
- Floating high lid: Sure
- Load lifters: Sure
- Hip belt pockets: Sure
- Hydration Compatibility: Sure
- Rain Cowl: Sure
- Supplies: 300-denier recycled ripstop nylon
- Execs: Simple-to-reach water bottle pockets, facet zipper entry, pack mods(moveable compression straps)
- Cons: The sternum strap pops off and may be tough to reseat shortly.
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, supplying you with a lot of open and closed storage to prepare your gear.
- The entrance stretch pocket is especially made from stable cloth for elevated sturdiness. It has stretch facet panels to allow enlargement whereas nonetheless offering drainage, and a high webbing strap secures its contents.
- The facet 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 edges of the pack bag. This can be a signature characteristic on a lot 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 massive, have beefy YKK zippers, and are lined with stable cloth for sturdiness. They’ll simply maintain a smartphone.
- The highest lid has two pockets: one on high 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 good overload functionality for carrying cumbersome gadgets like rope, a foam pad, or a bear canister.
The primary pack again additionally has a facet zipper down the left facet, making it very straightforward to extract gear buried deeply within the pack with out taking all the pieces out via the highest. Facet zippers like this are sometimes discovered on winter packs and higher-volume backpacks, together with searching packs, and so they’re an amazing comfort.
Backpack Body and Suspension
The Traverse 32 is an inside body backpack with a 360-degree perimeter wire body that provides the pack a energetic but supportive really feel. The hipbelt is completely connected and anchored on to the body, so that you get a really responsive carry with glorious load switch to the hips and lumbar area of the pack.
The pack’s load lifters are anchored on the high of the body so you may pull the pack nearer to you and align it higher together with your hips, whereas the pack’s sternum straps slide down a entrance rail, making adjusting very straightforward. 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 greater up.
As well as, and it is a showstopper, the sternum strap sliders are likely to pop off their rails when torqued, rendering the sternum strap ineffective. You’ll be able to reseat them with slightly apply, however it’s tremendous annoying, and there’s no actual workaround wanting stitching on a alternative strap together with your industrial stitching machine. It’s onerous to imagine that 1) this pack made it out of manufacturing with such a major usability flaw and a couple of) that it continues to be bought 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 facet seams of the pack, permitting you to maneuver its facet compression straps up or down alongside the size of the pack. This makes it very straightforward to reconfigure the facet straps to hold cumbersome gear, like snowshoes or a foam pad, and lash them to the edges 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 may usually implement utilizing cords and a few cordage on many backpacks.
Evaluation (Not a suggestion)
The REI Traverse 32 is a well-designed backpack in order for you one for higher-mileage hikes or winter climbing and snowshoeing. Its bottle pockets are exceptionally straightforward to make use of, and the facet zipper entry removes lots of frustration when utilizing a top-loading backpack with a high lid pocket or a roll high, the place it’s important to unpack to search out something inside fully. Nevertheless, as I famous above, the sternum strap is liable to popping off, tough to reseat, making the backpack fatally flawed, in my view. There are two related backpacks that I like to recommend as an alternative: the Deuter Speedlite 30 and the Gregory Zulu 30, which have related options and may also be used year-round.
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