Mountainsmith Zerk 40 VERSUS Ultimate Direction Fastpack 40 VERSUS UltrAspire Epic XT 2.0

Kaitlyn and I are on the hunt for new packs. Unfortunately my old Osprey got ravaged by mold in storage during the flood season and Kaitlyn has never hiked and packed before. I decided I wanted something a bit different to the classic Osprey pack and went on the hunt to find my 'perfect' pack. What I found were the Mountainsmith Zerk 40L, the UltrAspire Epic 2 and the Ultimate Direction Fastpack 40L.

Our packing arrangement lends itself towards a combo of fastpacking and ultra light. My hours of online searching led me to these as the potential best for our style. Because they weren't locally available in any stores to try, we bought them to test out for a few weeks. This video is my thoughts and impressions of the 3 packs.

Unfortunately because we had to return them, we couldn't test them in the wild and our testing was purely based on indoor use with weights only.

We are also not sponsored or affiliated with any of the companies, we used our own money to buy and then get refunds on the returned items, so these are pure unbiased opinions.

Also apologies for the random audio throughout, I think our receiver mic ran out of battery. We're still learning to dial in our audio, so it will be better in the next one!

See blog for more details:

https://www.thekadonexperience.com/adventure-centre/searchingfortheperfectbackpack