Seek Outside Silverton 2300 Pack Review
The good folks from Seek Outside and Rokslide provided me with the new Seek Outside Silverton Day packs to review.
What Seek Outside says about their pack – “The Silverton 2300 ci is our all new day pack or quick overnight backpacking pack designed to be minimalist yet feature-rich, lightweight yet comfortable, and compatible to our revolution suspension. The design includes a removable interior frame sheet for added rigidity when using it as a backpacking pack”.
The Seek Outside Silverton can be seen here. It retails for $349.
Silverton 2300
The Silverton is a 2600 cubic inch (42 liters) internal frame pack. In my humble opinion, the listed pack volume is understated a little—it’s roomy, and that’s not counting the stretchy sewn-on pockets! It’s constructed of 210d Ultragrid fabric, which is waterproof. Seek Outside doesn’t want to list the pack as waterproof as the seams aren’t sealed, but in my experience, it’s waterproof (sans scuba diving with it). The fabric isn’t as quiet as, say, 500d Cordura, but it’s not too bad. With use, it becomes a little quieter. It comes in two colors: Silverado (grey) and Avocado (light green, the version I got).
The stated weight is 2 lbs 3 oz, which is what I get on my scale. Neither the waist belt nor the hip belt is removable.
The frame is a removable plastic sheet that weighs 7 oz (as confirmed by my scale).
My Use
I’ve been using the Silverton pack almost daily, both as a stand-alone daypack and in conjunction with their Revolution frame. The volume is sufficient that I’ve even made some two- to three-day trips with it.
When used as a daypack with the frame sheet, I found 25-ish pounds to be about my comfort tolerance. If one wanted more capacity in terms of weight, you could probably find thicker plastic to cut a frame sheet. Used with their frame, the weight limit is as much as you want to carry.
Silverton 2300 Harness
Neither the shoulder straps nor the hip belt are overly padded, and the hip belt padded section is not very big. I also think this pack would benefit greatly from using an inward pull setup for the belt; it’s just much easier and more efficient to use with no downside.
With that said, it’s sufficient for most daypack duties.
One feature I really like is that the sternum strap has several ladder loops that allow height adjustment but can’t slip (up or down) like a lot of sternum straps.
Silverton 2300 Pockets
The pack includes two tall zipped pockets, one on each side. I found that I could easily fit my smaller (Aziak backcountry) tripod in one and/or two foldable (Black Diamond Z poles) trekking poles. It’s not quite tall enough for a 3-section collapsible trekking pole, but the majority of it can be fitted and zipped up.
One note on the use of these pockets: using these pockets does reduce the volume of the main bag. If you need the maximum volume, you can store these aforementioned items in the stretch pockets.
The pack comes with two roomy side stretch pockets that easily swallow most water bottles (or tripods or trekking poles) and a stretch face pocket that can accommodate rain gear and the like. Having these large stretch pockets really helps increase the available volume of the main bag!
Lid and Hip Pockets
There is a zippered lid pocket on top. It’s not overly roomy but roomy enough for extra gloves, essentials (first aid, fire, etc.), kill kit, etc. Also, two attached zippered side pockets on the hip belt. These are small pockets—we’re talking a couple of bars, a cell phone, etc. The interior has a small zippered pocket near the top, roughly 5×8”—again, smaller stuff like headlamps, small electronics, first aid kit, etc.
Attaching To a Frame
The pack includes four 26” gatekeeper straps. You’ll need these to attach the pack to the frame, but they can also be used as compression straps or to attach things like snowshoes. I’m a huge fan of these straps. They are super versatile and can be quickly added (and removed) and moved around wherever you need.
Frame Attach Points
One thing I noticed right off the bat about attaching the bag to the frame is that the loops on the pack are roughly half the size of the loops on the frame (or the loops on their larger bags). While I had no issue using them (including hauling ~ 100 lbs), I’d personally prefer them to be the same size. There are only a few grams of weight savings with the smaller loops and would just feel better if they were the same size.
As mentioned above, it had enough volume to accommodate several two—and three-day trips.
Conclusion
My overall opinion is that this is a very nice little pack (in reality, not so little at ~50 liters!). The stretch pockets swallow up a lot of gear, making for even more room. It wasn’t designed primarily as a meat hauler, but with its frame, it makes a great daypack/hauler. This daypack could easily be used year-round and do double duty as a carry-on/travel bag. Available here.
Comment or ask Mike questions here.
*Seek Outside is a Rokslide advertiser
Read more Rokslide pack reviews.
