Hi,
I'm looking at the Cilogear 45L as a climbing pack for trips where I might be carrying in bivy gear to the base of a route, then stripping it down for climbing. I'm thinking primarily alpine rock. What's attractive to me is that it's big enough that I won't have a bunch of stuff strapped to the outside for schwacky approaches.
I looked at a friend's Cilo 45L and liked a lot about it. My one concern is that it is really tall for the portion of the trip where I'd be actually rock climbing.
The conclusion I came to is that I'd remove the hipbelt, foam pad, and framesheet (probably wouldn't use the framesheet at all anyway) for climbing, then cinch down on load lifters all the way to 'eat up' the 4 - 6" of height above the connection point of the shoulder straps. This, combined with yarding down on the internal compression strap for whatever is in there, seems like it would effectively have the load on the shoulders. Playing around in his garage, this seemed like it shortened the pack up enough such that the bottom didn't ride over my harness (getting in the way of chalkbag and gear loops).
Is this what other people do? I'm kinda nervous about doing this a lot and somehow making the load be carried by the inner fabrics in a way that isn't ideal or something. Especially if I'm putting stuff in there for a walkoff that weighs a little something (like the rope or rack). For actual climbing when I've just got a little water, food, and clothing, seems like my setup would be OK.
I'd sure like to hear what others are doing who have a pack like this. The 30:30 is a little on the small side for what I'd like to be doing and the equipment I currently own; also I'd like the more 'real' hipbelt of the 45L for approach hikes.
Caveat emptor: I haven't done alpine rock climbing with a sack this big, as most of my stuff has been car-to-car with a smaller pack.