The Return of the Waist Pack (aka bum bag, fanny pack, lumbar pack, front pack)

With a waist pack on the Continental Divide Trail in 1985

A recent trend in long-distance hiking in the USA is to use a waist pack to carry small items so they are quickly accessible. This isn’t actually a new idea, though I’ve seen it presented as such. I used to carry such a pack regularly because, as I wrote in the first edition of The Backpacker’s Handbook in 1991 “with a really heavy pack access to all the little odds and ends that are needed during a day’s walk can be difficult, especially when all you’re wearing is shorts and a tee-shirt. Taking off the pack every time you need to check the map, apply sunscreen, nibble some trail mix, is simply too much of a chore and requires far too much energy.”

 

Waist pack (on the left), on my walk the length of Norway and Sweden

I said much the same in the second edition in 1997. However, by the time I wrote the third edition (2005) I’d stopped using a waist pack due to “ the lightening of my load, which made it easier to take the pack off, but, more importantly, …. hipbelts with pockets”. Mesh side pockets accessible while wearing the pack were also a factor. All the small items I might need during the day were now to hand without need of a waist pack.

Waist packs never went away of course. Runner still used them. But I hadn’t seen a backpacker with one for many years until this summer in the Colorado Rockies. Why they’ve come back I don’t know – I find it curious - but they have and many makers of ultralight gear now offer them. I have one, the Mountain Laurel Designs Burro, which I’ll be testing on my next trips. Maybe I’ll be reconverted.