One of the best large, men’s, camping backpacks on the market today is the Gregory Baltoro 75 backpack. It’s a brilliant backpack that allows you to stuff all your essential camping gear into a rucksack and put the entire load on your back with ease.
The bag comes with a premium price, but a premium construction and features that you don’t often see on rucksack of this size. This is not a lightweight design, it’s a heavy-duty rucksack to take your camping equipment into the countryside.
Design
The Gregory Baltoro 75 Backpack comes in three sizes covering different capacities, weights, torso sizes and waist sizes. The three sizes are;
- Small -71 Litre Size, weighing 2.32Kg, Torso size 16-18 inches (41-46 cm), 27″ – 47″ / 68.5 – 119.4cm
- Medium – 75 Litre size, Weighing 2.42KG, M-type 18-20 inches (46-51 cm), 28″ – 48″ / 71.1 – 121.9cm
- Large – 80 Litre size, Weighing 2.53 KG, L-type 20-22 inches (51-56 cm), 30″ – 50″ / 76.2 – 127cm
The rucksack is made of 100% Nylon with a 135D High-Density Embossed Polyester inner lining and a wishbone aluminium frame with anti-barreling cross-stay technology. This, together with shoulder and hip straps with Gregory’s own technology, help to keep the weight in the right place on your back.
One design feature you don’t often see on a 75-Litre rucksack is a Dual-layer bottom panel. This is a wholly added advantage that gives the backpack its durability and resistance to bear the load at the bottom and allow the extra feature of a sleeping bag compartment.
Pockets
What do we like about the Baltoro 75? Apart from the rugged design, we love the organisation that the rucksack allows. You get a total of 10 exterior pockets. Three zipped pockets on the top lid that are perfect for small items like snacks for the route or your GPS navigator, although one of the pockets needs to be used for the custom-fitted rain cover that comes included.
Two long pockets along the front and a further two pouch on the hip belt. In addition to these seven zipped pockets, there are two mesh water bottle holders either side that are great for large water bottles and a large mesh shove-it pocket on the front.
Stability
There are two parts of stability, the basic design, and the shoulder/hip straps. The basic design of the Baltoro 75 includes as 3D foam breathable back panel that consists of a removable foam lumbar shim that can help you customise the rucksack to your lower back contour. It’s made of mostly mesh and includes plenty of openings across the foam construction to help with ventilation.
The second part of stability is the shoulder/hip straps that allow you to position the rucksack in the right place on your torso. In an ideal scenario, the weight needs to be 70% on your hips, and 30% on your shoulders. In this case, the rucksack has been designed with Auto Angle Adjust (A3) hipbelts and shoulder harnesses. The idea is that they adapt to your unique body geometry for a custom fit. The strap system works by attaching both hip straps and shoulder hardness to a core framework that allows them to rotate independently of each other.
In this case, the hip straps performed well and were very comfortable even when the weight started to increase. The shoulder straps did a great job and allowed the pack to feel very stable. In all honesty, I’ve used some 30-litre packs will less stability that this 75-litre pack.
Loop Zipper Pullers
The zippers are sturdy and will not wear out, so you need not worry about them tearing. The quality of the zippers is excellent, as they are all well coated against rust. The smooth running zippers will not hinder your usage at any point in time.
Price
Gregory rucksacks are not the cheapest on the market today, but they are also far from being the most expensive either. What they offer is value for money, you’re buying a quality product that will last you a good few years if you take care of it.
Gregory Deva
In this review, we’ve looked at the Gregory Baltoro 75 Backpack which has been designed as camping rucksack for men. Gregory, like many top of the range rucksack manufactures, also produce a range designed for women called the Gregory Deva. With this range of camping, rucksack designed for women is the Deva range.
The rucksacks are the same as the Baltoro range, with the only difference being, they’re slightly smaller (60, 70, and 80L compared with the Baltoro’s 65, 75, and 85L), and the shoulder/hips strap are marginally smaller.
Our verdict
This Gregory Baltoro 75 backpack is a great product for regular as well as occasional travellers who want to carry a lot of camping equipment and walk long distances comfortably.
