Pickle or ALICE pack for long term hitchhiking and camping

jakmail

jakmail

New member
I know pickles suck. But i do like my pickle quite a lot. Im attached to it.

I got an alice large with frame while i was working the past couple months. Objectively this would probably be the better bag and better for my back.

Any thoughts?
 
Pickles absolutely suck. Hands free, as often as possible. I'd go alice pack/fanny pack. Put your smaller frequently accessed items in the fanny and the rest in the pack. Alice packs are crazy durable but also heavy. I still opt for an alice over a lightweight pack, I'd rather have 2 more pounds on me than ever worry about my pack getting fucked up. My alice is 72 liters top and bottom loading with a unzipping barrier between. Army surplus sleeping bag fits perfectly in the bottom, everything else in the top portion. I don't like molle pouches because they're likely to get caught on things like ladders etc. Plus they're too heavy for their size with their metal clips and such. I think 72 liters is already plenty of room.
 
If those were my only options, I'd go with the alice.

Pickle packs are really just big stuff sacks. having all my gear in a long tube with no accessible pockets or compartments is a huge bummer. Plus theres no back/shoulder/sternum support at all. Those things are basically awful.

Alice packs really are great, there is a reason people still haul em around after all these years. They are damn near bullet proof, which I cant say about alot of similarly priced/easily accessible modern hiking backpacks. I used to not care much for external frame packs but alot of that came from me not understanding how to correctly pack my gear in them. If yer going to use any external frame pack I would recommend looking into how to properly distribute yer gear in them, yer back will thank you.
 
That comment about back/knee pain is no joke.... I'm pretty much out of commission now due to on going issues with both, so I would travel as light as possible and consider everything to be expendable if need be...
[*that's the free-diving/spearfishing credo, everything is expendable when it comes to saving your life]
That Alice pack support system looks like the bees knees..... I would have loved to have had a set up like that back when I was younger and in better shape !!
 
Hi all. Fairly new to Squat the Planet, but have a lot of experience with the ALICE pack, so I thought i would make my first post. Lived out of one when I was in the military. Would agree with what everyone else is saying about the comparison between the ALICE pack and the pickle bag. When the pickle bag is heavy with gear those straps will just rip apart your shoulders and with no type of frame is hell on your back. If you have the ALICE pack filled but packed correctly it can be as comfortable as a pack can get. They are also sturdy as hell. Mine survived about 50 parachute jumps and getting thrown off the back of a truck more times than i can remember and mine is still serviceable and I still use it. If you are going to be carrying heavy loads it will serve you well. Because of the frame, they do take up more space and they can't really be compressed like the pickle bag. Hope this helps. I love this site and all the information sharing that goes on.
 
OTTERWOLF said:
That comment about back/knee pain is no joke.... I'm pretty much out of commission now due to on going issues with both, so I would travel as light as possible and consider everything to be expendable if need be...
[*that's the free-diving/spearfishing credo, everything is expendable when it comes to saving your life]
That Alice pack support system looks like the bees knees..... I would have loved to have had a set up like that back when I was younger and in better shape !!
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Thanks for the advice. My pack weight never exceeded 40 lbs before. Usually its around 30lbs including food and water. I used to travel SUPER light, like a small daypack and a sleeping bag rolled up and carried. That kinda sucked though
 
If you can order one of the Marine acy'terix packs (or however you spell it ) they will fit everything you coupd possibly want in your bag and are basically a comfortable "hiking" internal frame pack on steroids made by one of the best hiking bag companies on the planet just beefed up and more durable then commercial hiking gear made for the military , and there digi camo
 
Johny said:
If you can order one of the Marine acy'terix packs (or however you spell it ) they will fit everything you coupd possibly want in your bag and are basically a comfortable "hiking" internal frame pack on steroids made by one of the best hiking bag companies on the planet just beefed up and more durable then commercial hiking gear made for the military , and there digi camo
Click to expand...

I actually used that ILBE pack for about a ween before ultimately abandoning it. Bad decision. Would have bought another but wanted to give alice a go instead
 
I've actually got advice to chime in here! I've hitched cross country a few times with ALICE. My advice is this: ditch the large immediately and replace it with a medium. You can keep the frame, but the large pack makes it way too easy to overpack and it sucks squeezing it into small cars that stop.
 
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