peregrination
___________
Robert Barlow

Design Notes

2023-04-13

My first ski pack is nearly two years old now, and it’s been a great pack. I’ve taken it up Mount Washington, in the backcountry of Jay Peak, on multiple cross-country skiing traverses, and up a couple of Sierra peaks. For most of last summer, it was also my go-to biking backpack. The straps fit well, it has just the right capacity, and it’s super lightweight.

After using it for two years, I keep stumbling across things things about the pack that I think could be better. I started off with just the thought that the cinch top would be better as a roll top. Next I wanted a dedicated pocket for an avalanche shovel an probe, and then I wanted a hip belt. With spring ski traverse season quickly approaching, I decided to dive into making a second version of the pack.

I began my design as I often do in my sketchbook, with both a rough sketch of my design for the pack and with a list of the features that I was looking to include. Here’s my initial page to the right. I’ve listed the features I wrote down below. Nearly all of them made their way into my final design.

My first ski pack used 1000d Cordura for the side panels for it’s abrasion resistance, and that had worked very well in withstanding constant abuse from the edges of my skis. I found some 500d Cordura in a black camo print on sale at Rocky Woods, and decided to use it as the first primary fabric of the pack. I went with an X-Pac VX07 for the rest of the main panels. When I first got into making gear, I had purchased some blaze orange Gutermann Mara thread on sale, and the blaze orange color has been an accent in most of my work since then. The blaze orange choice here was a bit of a nod to that. In my previous work, I’ve skewed towards earthy tones or monochrome, but I’ve been interested recently in doing more work in bright, vibrant colors.

After picking out the fabrics, I incrementally built up the pack in CLO3D. First, I designed the avalanche pocket in the front panel of the backpack. Next, I used my experience from my running vest prototypes to design a set of well-fitting straps using the 3D avatar. The pack itself drew heavily from my experience both in the first version of the ski touring pack, and from my PCT backpack.

I’ve written it here before, but having a 3D cloth simulation and patterning software is incredibly useful in designing a pack. I can play around with ideas much quicker and iterate faster than building smaller prototypes, and I can work out construction of everything much better than sketching things out in my design book.

Having the avatar available for fit design is invaluable. Well fitting pack straps have been a crux of design for me, and being able to design them digitally and adjust the fit as needed has made my life much easier. No more guesswork regarding the fitment, nor anxiety about wasting expensive fabrics!

Once I had the front panel and the back panel designed, I worked out where I wanted my ski straps to be and added in the bottom panel and the side panels.

Fabrication Notes

Here’s a collection of photos from cutting up my materials and stitching everything together. I printed out 1:1 scale pattern pieces for the curved, more complex pieces, and went off of dimensions for the rectangles. With the pattern from CLO-3D and and my model of the pack to guide me along, I was able to get through the fabrication phase much quicker than other packs. Just like the design phase, I put together the Avy pocket first, then the back panel, then sewed on the sides to pull everything together.