I stumbled across this thread while doing a little bit of googling. I don’t own one of these, but my good friend and hunting partner has had one for a little bit over a year. I’ve watched him mess around with it and try to make it work the entire time. Here are the things that I have noticed him that he has said to me. Any comparisons made below will be against my stone glacier X curve with an avail 2200 bag.
overall, his badlands seems to be made extremely well as far as durability and longevity is concerned. It weighs probably 30% more than my stone glacier, but it carries the extra weight well. He is about 6 foot one, 165 pounds, and has very narrow shoulders and is extremely lean. He has an issue often times with packs fitting with the shoulder straps too far out on his shoulders, but he was able to get the Vario adjusted to sit right. But one of the first things we did notice once he got it adjusted in sitting just right on his back was how giant the bag was overall. Even fully compressed to run in day pack mode, it was just obscenely huge we felt. But, he got it for 50% off, so he was willing to live with some of those relatively minor annoyances as long as it functioned well.
however, there are two giant seems that run through the lumbar pad on either side of his spine. These are behind the actual padding, but are large and bulky enough that they actually push through the padding and rub his hip bones raw and create pressure points. When he asked Badlands about it, they simply said nobody had ever complained about it and that all of the packs had that same stitching. So, he spent an additional 80 bucks on some high density foam padding and beefed up and modified the lumbar pad so that he could actually wear the pack without hurting his back. Then, on his first trip out in Colorado mule deer hunting last year with it, the handle strap on top of the bag broke. He had probably 35 pounds of gear in it and picked it up to put it in his truck and The handle just came off. So, back to Badlands it went after his hunt. So, before he had ever really used it, he had already had two headaches with it.
after everything was modified and fixed, he actually got to where he really likes the bag. Even with a broken handle, he still used it on his Colorado mule deer hunt and packed out an entire quartered out mule deer plus head and cape in the bag and he said it handled the load extremely well. He was actually pretty mind blown with how comfortable the bag was and how easy it made carrying that much weight. Granted, mule deer aren’t that big, but he was carrying for fall bone in quarters plus neck meat, backstrap‘s, tenderloins, plus the head and cape. So, it’s not like there wasn’t any weight in it.
he used it on a couple of backpacking/camping trips with his family in the high uintahs this year and during those trips, he had between 60 and 80 pounds of his gear plus his kids gear in it. Again, he said it carried the weight very well and he was very comfortable. However, after a couple of these trips, it started to develop a pretty significant squeak/creak every time the weight shifted or he took a step. He was constantly messing with the straps trying to get it to go away, but it just got worse with time. It eventually hit the point where during archery season this year, he went back to using his old 2200 badlands pack because his Vario was basically useless as a hunting pack. It legitimately squeaked so loud that I could hear him walking from about 80 yards away. So, it eventually went back to Badlands, and they just sent him a new frame. His new one is a little bit better, but it still has the really pronounced seems that press into his lower back, and it still has a minor squeak. He says it still carries weight very well, but if he hadn’t bought it on the 50% off sale last year, he would be very very livid with the amount of noise it makes. Every pack I have ever owned or had experience with has made some amount of noise, but this one was excessive to say the least. Hopefully this helps some of you watching this thread!
im going in for 7-10 days just a little heavier than you are for a daypack......
