How to Wear Your 2-Bottle Waist Pack

 

 

 

[image credit IMDb]

Behind Richard Boone's left hand one can partially see the buckle of his gun belt, clearly riding below his regular belt.  That low-slung, on-the-hip location was where I thought the best place was to wear my 2-bottle waist pack.

I was wrong, but your mileage may vary.  Read on.

In our Appalachian Trail run of a couple weeks ago, one of our group, sorta new to trail running, was trying out his new twin-bottle waist pack.  I don't know the brand, but it was a typical pack, with a pair of bottles flanking a central pack compartment into which you could stuff some food, a camera, a couple gadgets, etc.

His pack was flapping noisily with every step and I could well imagine that there was a chafe, somewhere, well underway.

I offered the suggestion that I have had good luck cinching my pack at the thinnest part of my waist, as opposed to low like a gunslinger's gun belt.

I previously posted on this topic, where I wrote the following, still true today:

Well, it was only a short distance run with my spanking new waist pack before I realized that the pack and bottles bounced all over the place. I finally devised the solution that the pack could not ride like Paladin's gunbelt. It had to ride several inches higher, actually around the smallest part of my waist. There I cinched it down as tightly as needed to preclude the dreaded bounce.

It took only a little getting used to, and with the right amount of cinching—up to but not past the point of uncomfortability—I could run bounce-free. And what’s more, the actual weight carried did not seem burdensome. It was like it (almost) wasn’t there.

 

Post script confession: I fully admit my man crush on Richard Boone as Paladin in Have Gun Will Travel, a 1950s TV western that I find to still be quite relevant today.  Besides the post quoted above, I've also blogged about Have Gun Will Travel here, here, here and here.