As most of you know, I am the aforementioned Graham, and I own CiloGear. I am more than willing to offer my thoughts, but I hesitate for the hard sell, especially online where miscommunication is so easy -- Dane or anybody else, please feel free to call us at 503-305-3858 for the hard sell.
Dane bought a V2 30L pack from us when we were still making packs in Turkey. It didn't work for him due to his torso length and some quality control concerns. That transaction was one of the final straws that drove me to make the command decision and then the massive investment of time and money to move our production in house on premises. I took the time to write this ridiculously long response because of this history with Dane, his excellent involvement in our little community, and because I feel that we are doing incredible work. Yesterday was CiloGear's fifth birthday (yay!) in terms of sales, and in the 15 months that we've been in our current office, we have come to consistently make excellent packs quickly. I'm very proud of what we've achieved, and I am confident that anybody who has seen or used a pack we've made in the past six months will agree that CiloGear packs are very well constructed. The one construction aspect I want to improve is to have a bartack instead of an overlap stitch on the shoulder straps, but I don't have the $8k for the necessary bartack machine.
First off, at the Feathered Friends Rep Dayz event I used the phrase "work in progress" casually when I shouldn't have spoken so lightly. Basically, I meant that we are constantly looking to improve the product. I really believe that we are making the best alpine climbing packs in the world right now. Making them here in Portland means that we inspect every single pack as it comes off the line and goes out the door. We discuss how to improve our production system in a Kaizen event pretty much every week, but the discussion on how to sew them faster or better is pretty much done. In my mind, when I said "work in progress" I was actually quoting Taiichi Ohno, the developer of the Toyota Production System, which we base our current manufacturing system on. Unfortunately, it is a prime example of saying the right idea the wrong way.
As Dane knows and everybody else should know, I've got total respect for Randy's stuff. I think he should improve his ice tool attachment system. Some of his idiosyncratic design choices don't work for me very well, but I'm also sure that some of CiloGear's idiosyncratic design choices don't work for everybody. Heck, I'm even thinking of offering a variant of the 60 and the 45 with two fixed straps in addition to all the Dee-Clip stuff.
Titoune no longer owns Wild Things. The owners of Wild Things, The Walnut Group and the Consumer Growth Partners, say that they are focused on transforming the company "into an elite consumer brand over the next five years." In english, that means "stop making loss leading crap for climbers." I'm sure that Titoune as manager will still do what she can to serve her original customers and will try to grow the company well, but I think she's probably between a rock and a hard place in managing everybody's expectations.
Now onto actual pack stuff...
I'm going to outline as briefly as I can manage why I am confident that CiloGear's packs are far superior to any other alpine climbing pack for the vast majority of climbers. I will add some details specifically about our Dyneema fiber materials.
0. Obviously the below is my opinion. I own this company and I believe in our product very strongly. I also know there is no one solution for everybody. Ultimately, in our game of climbing, a pack is a pack. It's what YOU do with it that counts.
1. CiloGear packs carry better than our competitors packs. Our radical wedge design works better for carrying heavy loads over rough approaches and works better when climbing with a bulky but relatively light load.
2. CiloGear packs are significantly more versatile. Our Dee Clip system doesn't take much to learn how to use, and once you've spent the time to learn it, you'll be able to do more with less. It's not for everybody. Then again, neither is driving a car which is a lot harder than putting a strap on a pack. Many people report that CiloGear packs carry extremely well just using the internal compression strap without any straps at all on the outside.
3. CiloGear blends materials of many different weights and of soft and harder hands (ie flexibility). This makes better load transfer, better durability and a better pack. We use a material called VX21 on a lot of our packs. It's a laminate of 210d Cordura. There is nfw that it belongs on the bottom of a pack that is going to be used climbing. And yet many of our competitors use it for just that purpose pretending that because it's laminated it's stronger across the board. That's marketing bullsh*t. It is significantly more rigid and does a fantastic job transferring a load, but VX21 has a tear strength that maxes out at 28 pounds versus 50 odd pounds for the VX42 on the bottom of the 30/45 WorkSack or 66 pounds on VX51 found on the 40s/60s/75s . Plus, because it's more rigid, the material is prone to getting caught on rocks and abraded. This is just one concrete example of how using different materials results in a significantly more robust pack.
4. CiloGear packs are really light. If you compare apples to apples, our packs are lighter than any of our competitors. For instance, I have never gotten decent load transfer out of a dinky hollow Y tube of aluminum with a climbing load. I find that the foam we use outperforms such fake frames -- your mileage may vary, but it's something to consider in making comparisons. Our framesheet is a heavy, dumb, 100% recycled HDPE sheet with a huge heavy bar of Oregon made Aluminum because I haven't found anything within $15 of our cost that outperforms and outlasts this old technology. Our pads are made from the stiffest, most resilient foam available. The packs come with enough straps to use extras tying up your laundry, keeping your shower head attached to the wall, or anything else you might try out. Most packs come with two compression straps per side, but in the bigger packs you could put 5 straps on each side of a CiloGear. If you're comparing the weights, I'd request that you think about that...
5. CiloGear packs carry modern ice tools and would carry historical examples from Dane's collection better than any other pack on the market. Loops suck with tools with pinky rests. We separate the flap from the buckle, give you enough to double the strap around the tool shaft if desired, and have enough of a daisy to move the upper retention strap up or down to fit your tool. For a mountaineering axe, you could always put a retention loop on one of the other loops on the pack. In the words of John Race in his 5 Star Alpinist Mountain Standard Award giving review : I "appreciated the security and simplicity of the ice ax attachments." In the words of one of the many AMGA instructor pool folks using the pack: "The tool attachments made it easy to store and access tools -- even access them while I was wearing the pack."
Onto Dyneema / Spectra...
We currently use three different kinds of woven fabrics made from Dyneema fibers. CiloGear also make packs from a variety of non-woven fabrics that use Dyneema fibers to achieve their incredible strength to weight ratios. Our NWD packs are mostly made from a material with abrasion resistance similar to 300d Cordura (ie more than 210d whether in VX21 or in our 210d Dyneema Ripstop Cordura fabrics...) that has a tear strength of 262 pounds. That's 9 times stronger, oh yeah, and the material is less than half the weight of VX21.
To the best of my knowledge, CiloGear is the only company in the world making real high volume, real load carrying packs out of non-woven Dyneema.
We use two different laminations of a 210d 87% Dyneema X-Pack fabric that Dimension Polyant made for us. The material uses some Dacron in the weft. One of the laminations is super stiff, the other is more flexible. We use these to achieve the same load transfer that we get from the X-Pack materials in the regular WorkSacks. (Did I mention that AAI awarded our entire line the Guide's Choice Award saying that "we are pleased to say that the CiloGear WorkSack is the best carrying and lightest line of packs there are.")
We also use a ripstop pattern 420d Dyneema fabric. This provides better abrasion resistance than the VX Dyneema, but doesn't transfer a load as well due to it's super soft hand. As such, we are currently using the 420d on the sides of the pack and on the harness side (back panel) where you need a ton of strength. I wish I could use it on the bottom, but using a material like any Dyneema or Spectra fabric I've seen without the X-Pack on the bottom of a pack turns it into a turgid sausage and it carries like crap.
We have all of these materials in stock and we build packs out of the stuff every week. We do some light customization on our NWD and Dyneema packs, like leaving off the crampon pocket or whatever, and we work closely with these customers to make sure the pack fits. If you buy one of these packs, we will make sure it fits you. Because of the cost of materials, we can't offer refunds or returns once we've started making the pack, but I'm perfectly happy to send out a loaner pack to make sure the thing fits before we build it...
As I said at the beginning, if anybody is still reading, call for more details or the hard sell. 503-305-3858. But I'm taking the dog out for a walk for till 1 PM pacific time today, the 7th of December. (And here's a toast to those who gave their lives for my country...)
