Vintage Backpacks

Oh God! can we just let the external frame pack go! please! What’s next, bell bottoms? there is a reason the vast majority of the market is using internals. Next year at Philmont these packs will be all the rage.

Ext frame load carrying physics actually works very well. I have been carrying a hybrid for years with my McHale pack. Very retro!

I still use an external frame backpack. It feels more comfortable to me. I’ve tried internal frame packs, but they don’t fit as well. I like the higher center of gravity and air flow of the external. To each their own!

I’ve seen the smaller, retro day-packs that JanSport sells and I seriously want one. They remind me of hiking with my dad, riding on his shoulders. Not sure I’ll be trading my internal for one of the above bags though.

I carried an original D2 for nearly 35 years and would be using it today had it not been destroyed in a fire last year. I’ve been looking for a replacement on the used market since.

All I wanna know is where can I buy one of these now ones, and when.

Never been anything quite like’em

Wow – the D2 was my very first backpack….

I managed an outdoor store during the transition years from external to internal packs and actively sold and recommended both styles depending on a customer’s stated uses. Jansport’s external frames were and still are good viable packs for heavy loads. Internal frames definitely have some advantages, but for big loads, non-technical trails (AT, for example) or hot weather external packs are great. I think their demise was largely one of “coolness factor” and the industry finding a way to sell new packs at premium price points. Many younger folks (I’m 42) only think of them as antiquated technology, having never carried one. That’s a shame. I still have an old D2 as well as newer internal frames by Gregory and Osprey. All are good for specific trails.

Nothing wrong with a well-designed external. To each his/her own I say. I’ve seen plenty of internal packs with so much stuff strapped onto the outsides that they might as well have been external packs to start with.

Call me old school (I’m 64), but I like an external frame. Like Brian says, different frames work well for different venues. I built my first external out of wood using copper rivets and army surplus webbing 50 years ago….I don’t buy into advertisings “ gotta buy it because it’s NEW or the latest TREND “ I’m all for getoutandjustdoit, that’s what counts !!

I owned one of the original D2’s. Great pack with great support. I remember wearing is as a emergency back brace once when my back went out while camping. I wore it empty of course.

Unbelievable…my old D2 is still hanging in my garage. I have refused to part with it, but it is very well used. I will run (not walk) to get one of these new packs!!

I can’t wait to get one. I have been backpacking on the AT for over twenty five years. I too got on the “cool” band wagon and own two high end internal frames that I have never really been comfortable with. There are times when one design is better over the other but for general backpacking on trails like the AT, the external frame is more comfortable and much easier to organize. I have an old external frame pack that I use regularly and always get laughed at by my cool hiking buddies. It’s good to hear externals might be making a comeback.

I bought my Jansport D2 in 1975 when they introduced it a year or two earlier. I use it to this day (2011)! It is great for extended trips (most for me was 5 days & nights on a 35 mile trek without reloading). I even slid it down steep slopes in the Grand Canyon. I especially love the horseshoe handles for lifting the pack for back-relief and free standing the pack where there is nothing to lean it, and the ease of getting to my gear because of the external frame. I have two D5 packs (smaller version of the D2)from the same era as well! I am so tickled to see the 2011 D2. It looks exactly like mine!!! 36 years old and still going!

Go Jansport! Bring back the quality and workmenship that will allways outlast its name.