When you cram most packs full, they tend to get round. They no longer maintain the desired concave curve up over your shoulders or wrap supportively around your waist and hips. So you either have to have a heavy duty, fairly rigid frame, which is precisely fitted to you, or you can try to load the pack meticulously and hope it maintains some semblance of your back’s shape. That’s something no one does very successfully. At MYSTERY RANCH, we don’t try to make the whole load take on your exact shape. Instead, we’ve engineered a more functional, more achievable solution.
An “Architectural” Solution:
Unlike other backpack makers, we build our pack bags and the load transference systems (what we call the mainframe) separately. These two critical elements are addressed with their own distinct design and engineering solutions. We design and sew our pack bags for optimal containment and taming of the load. Then we engineer a Load Carriage™ mainframe – separate from the pack bag – that can be ideally customized to fit your unique anatomy. All the personal shaping takes place outside of the pack bag. Most of our mainframes are built out of composite materials, so they flex as you pull on the lifter straps. Instead of the load distorting the pack, the load is shaped and contained in the most ideal manner – fairly flat and essentially twice as wide as it is thick on the mainframe. We then engineer all of the shaping for the shoulders, waist, and hips, outside of the pack bag, so it functions independently from the distortion that compromises most internal frames. This is the key difference in MYSTERY RANCH packs.
We do not sacrifice with materials or trim components to shave weight. Rather, we focus on the load-bearing features in our harnessing and frame and how they optimally support the load. In response to our “gram-shaver” friends, we assure you, long-haul comfort is way more important than micro tweaking the showroom “weight” of an empty pack. Remember, a 40lb load that carries like 30lbs is way preferable to a 40lb load that carries like 50lb.
