Thoughts on the Arc’teryx Altra 65
When I planned to walk from the Mexican border heading towards Canada for as long as I wanted on the Pacific Crest Trail; I knew I would need a good backpack.
I was a complete newbie when it came to thru-hiking¹, I also knew I would keep on travelling after after doing a couple of legs² in the USA. Roughly, I knew that I would potentially face large amounts of snow in the Sierras, hot weather in the Anza and Mojave desert and that I would need to deal with big creek or river crossings. I also knew I would need something that could carry a bear canister, an ice axe, trekking poles and up to eight days worth of food. In other words, I needed something versatile, but constructed to handle heavy loads.
I did not have a look at what experienced hikers used. Initially, I knew about the ultra-light movement, but I wanted to experience treks with a heavy load. I also had an Arc’teryx³ jacket that I liked a lot, so after browing around for a couple of hours I went ahead and bought one of the most expensive backpacks on the market(In 2016). The Arc’teryx Altra 65. I figured that buying the most expensive product available was going to set me up as I was about to jump off the plane and embrace a world of possibilities in the wilderness and beyond. The backpack had good ratings on different vendor websites. I also looked at different YouTube video’s to get a better idea of what I would spend my hard-earned cash on. Overall, the reviews were positive; I went ahead and made the purchase.

It turned out to be a bittersweet experience. I suffered a lot, but I also had some wins. I tested the backpack thoroughly; I ended up using it for about 2000 miles. Unto the review.
I’ve decided to structure the review by giving you my personal opinion, based on experience, of each of the backpacks features. I conclude with an overall impression of the backpacks performance. A small note, the back of the pack refers to the packs components that are close to the wearer, the front of the pack is any part facing outwards.
1- Waist belt follows the movement of the hips thanks to a pivot located at the back of the carbon-fiber frame composing the pack.

The movable hip belt is a feature that I appreciated a lot, but could have learned to live without. I let other hikers try the backpack and they often talked about how cool it was, but within a couple of miles, they generally forgot about it. My big gripe with this system is also one of it’s strong points. The belt can be removed. This is great for storage and travel, but not so great when the gears of the pivot system start breaking. I found myself regularly snapping the darned belt back into the pivot slot because it kept popping out. This doesn’t sound too bad, but try doing it at 3AM on a cold morning when you still haven’t fully woken up in complete darkness. The gears broke on me one by one. After 700 miles, then after 1200 miles… and eventually at 1800 miles. I believe that one of them broke when I slid on my butt going down a snowy slope. Otherwise, the backpack just doesn’t seem to ever stay upright. If it falls forward, then the hip belt receives the backpacks weight and that puts a lot of pressure on the pivot system.

With heavier loads, I ended up bruising the lower part of my back. I consider this to be a defect in the belt’s padding and overall design. I tried every combination of shoulder slots to adjust the pack to my height; without avail.
The pivot system is rigid, but the slot design needs to change. I would have been happier with a pre-lubricated slot system that cannot be pulled out. That would have been more durable.
Moving on to the pockets on the hip belt. They are flawed by design. Since the hip belt and that the pockets closely follows this curvature, you end up with arc-like pockets. This means that anything you will store that has a rectangular shape ends up looking like an arc after several hours. Instead, I used them as miniature garbage bags to dispose of my snack wrappings.
They need to replace those with bigger waterproof zipper pockets like they do on other packs. And make them rectangular! It would help prevent worrying that stored items will slide out of the mesh pockets.
2- Adjustable shoulder straps using an anchoring grid system allows setting the straps both horizontally and vertically to fit any build.

On paper this is a great idea, but in the end, it’s a poor answer to a custom designed backpack that would be built to your bodies shape. Once you set the shoulder straps to your body, you will probably never do it again. This means that there is extra weight on this pack for something that won’t be used very often. Otherwise, those anchors are surprisingly strong. I would often pack the backpack to it’s weight limit and none of the anchor teeth ever broke on me.
I had another gripe about this system though, an unforeseen one. The noise. The grinding noise of the anchor teeth against the grid drove me mad sometimes. The pack does come with a lubricating solution, but it was meant for the pivot belt, I hadn’t put it on the grid.
As other backpack companies have done, it would make more sense to produce the Altra 65 in different sizes and scrap the grid system. It would potentially drive the packs price and weight down as well.
3- A wet compartment located at the front of the pack allows storage of wet clothes, etc.
The wet compartment has a small draining hole at the bottom that will effectively let any water that might be in there out of the backpack. I never really had wet stuff though. Since I used a garbage bag to store my contents, I used this compartment for toiletries and other items. I also think it’s foolish to put wet items so far out from your center of gravity. Do you see yourself going uphill while your pack is pulling you backwards because of some wet clothes? One of the flaps of this compartment is stitched to the strap that closes down on the bags cap. I really liked that system as it would keep this compartment in place as I opened and closed the main zipper.
This compartment could be split into smaller sections and perhaps use a stretchable mesh. That would give the user more options in terms of content organization and easier access to the bottom content. Otherwise, it would be up to the user to avoid putting in wet clothes at the front of the pack. If you have wet gear, you either let it dry by attaching it outside of the pack, or you let it dry during a lunch break. Carrying that wet gear around is just a bad idea.
4- A sleeve-like compartment located between the carbon-fiber frame and the user for storing any kind of camel-pak.
I liked this sleeve. I couldn’t find a hole to pull out my camel-paks drinking tube though. In the end, I scrapped the camel-pack and started using the sleeve to store tortilla wraps and maps. I also realized that a leak in the sleeve would present some problems. The sleeve, if filled with water, would leak out into the backpack.
Some kind of drainage system would resolve the water issue. Otherwise, the sleeve does the job.
5- Large, pyramid-shaped side pockets for storing just about anything.
I hated these pockets for the following reasons:
- Couldn’t close them while I was wearing the pack, leading to lost equipment and water bottles.
- Any water bottle over 700ml would not fit.
- The pockets would retain water, if I didn’t close them(which I often didn’t fully), they would fill up when it rained. It was insanely hard to get the water out of the pockets once it got in. Usually, I would have to shake the pack upside down and pray(or curse at the clouds, occasionally).
It is beyond me why they didn’t use draining holes like they did with the big front compartment. Ideally, I would replace one of the pockets with a rigid mesh sleeve instead. This would be water bottle friendly, allow for easy access and also permit easy drainage.
6- Other features
The pack is pear-shaped. I believe this design exploits the natural way of carrying a pack to make carrying loads more comfortable. It sounds good, but fully loaded, the pack kind of always swayed either left or right on it’s back. This was driving me nuts since the pack doesn’t stand it’s base very well. I ended up using a tree to keep it upright most of the time, but even that wasn’t enough sometimes due to the pack taking on an oval shape when fully loaded.
Also, experienced hikers will tell you that it’s all about how you place the contents within your pack that matters. Usually, you try to keep heavy stuff at the center of the pack and as close to your spine as possible.
Other features worth mentioning are the many hinges available to tie on items, compressing straps and a frontal zipper giving you another option to access your items. I rarely used the latter, I think it’s a waste of material.
That’s that. If am rather critical on this review, it is because of the backpacks price-point, there is no room for mistakes. My overall impression with this pack is that it has many great ideas, but ultimately it falls short as far as everyday usage goes. It is not adapted for the quick-witted traveller who wants to ‘optimize his experience’.
The pack is rugged and will carry insane loads. In my opinion, it is not designed for hiking expeditions(no ice-axe fixture, no hiking pole holder, too few storage options…) and for the price point, there are better options out there. Both for travelling and hiking.
In the end, if you can find the pack for less than 200$, then it might be worth the purchase. With all the moving parts though, it has poor re-sale value. A lot of the packs biggest features can break or become unusable, so watch out for that.
¹ Long-distance hiking. I have seen it defined as 500 consecutive trail miles or more.
² A leg is simply a section or portion of trail. If you see a hiker say: ‘We had a good leg today.’, he probably referred to the hiking pace and the quality of the trail that day.
³ I did an informal survey with many hikers about their opinion of Arc’Teryx. Most opinions agreed that the brand produced high quality goods, but that they were expensive when compared to other available brands. It also came to my attention that Canadians and Europeans knew more about Arc’Teryx than americans.
