Kelty Redwing 50 Internal Frame Pack

I've used this bag twice now, once for camping and the second time for "urban camping" which is like camping and hiking but around civilization. This bag has a good deal of space for clothes, equipment and food. I also carried around a full sized SLR camera and two lenses in this bag comfortably. I'm a six foot tall woman with large hips and I find this bag to be comfortable after the spine support has been bent to fit. I hiked through eight towns with this bag with a sleeping bag attached to the outside of it and did just fine. The Kelty 50 is large enough to fit everything I could need while being small enough to take comfortably onto public transportation. I had no problems taking this onto a metro bus, a gray hound as well as an amtrak train. My only complaint comes from the side mesh bags, the stitching around the elastic of the mesh came undone and I've had to stitch it back together. The Kelty 40 was also used by my partner on this trip and we've found that the 50 is much better suited.I've gone back and taken pictures of both the bags side by side in case someone is looking to buy one or the other. When I was shopping bags I had a hard time finding pictures comparing these bags which made it hard to figure out what would be better. My sister is the owner of the Kelty 40 which was borrowed for "Urban camping" and intends to use it to back pack through Europe. I am the owner of the Kelty 50 and intend to use it for random travel. The main complaint with the Kelty 40 aside from it being too small for my taste, is the length of the bag. The Kelty 40 has a max length of 18.5 which is fine for most people but not the over six foot tall person it was used on. The Kelty 50 has two size options and works better for a longer torso-ed person. The Kelty 40 seems to be a better "light" packing bag, it doesn't have room for food or many other things when it's packed up. The Kelty 50 has room for everything you'd need for a few days. I carried enough food for two people in that bag for three days.

I read a lot of reviews on backpacks and I wanted one with a 'front load' versus a top load. I also needed a pocket for water bottles and a waist strap. The reviews I read were all correct in their assessment of this bag. This back pack is great for backpacking. I can fit my clothes in the main compartment, makeup and knick knacks in the small compartment up front. There's also a zipper pocket in the front face and two zipper pockets on each side where I can place documents for easy retrieval. There are two water bottle pockets on each side for water, or whatever else fits. There's an adjustable strap across the chest and another with padding around the waist to relieve weight tension off the shoulders, which helped a lot more than expected. As with most backpacks, there's an internal frame (that was a little too big for a little girl like me). This would be a great backpack for any man or tall woman. I am 5'2", about 115 lbs, and pack moderately when traveling, so the bag looked huge on me and I had a lot of empty space in the top portion of the backpack for my 2 week trip through Europe. One con is that since I didn't pack fully, everything seemed to slip to the bottom of the bag and it became 'pear' shaped until I re-sorted my items.. There are little straps to hold the bag ...'in shape', but I guess since my bag wasn't full, things kept moving around inside. Otherwise, this is a great bag and I just may buy the 44 liter. The internal frame was a little long on the 50 liter, but the bag still fit under the seats on the airplanes (except they stuck out a little). Considering that I didn't pack fully in the 50 liter bag and most items were light clothing, my overall bag was still under 10 kilos (for the Ryanair travelers).

Due to very positive net reviews and looking at the pack in stores I bought the Kelty Redwing 50 on Amazon. I'm a mountain day hiker transitioning to extended day outings so familiar with lighter weight day packs, not the bigger packs for overnights and multiday use. Actually my two day packs are nice school packs. My intention was to get a medium size pack and use it for a while to get familiar with the straps, adjustments and waist belt. The pack would then become my day pack and with the experience I got I would then buy a more expensive light weight multiday pack. To test out myself and the pack I made the following trips.1. 2 5 mile road hikes with 10 lbs.2. 2 9.5 mile road hikes with 30 and 33 lbs.3. 4 day hike over the AT section of Graylock in Massachusetts. The first two days were with 41 lbs. The remainder of the trip was about 31lbs as I mailed home needless gear.4. 2 day trail trip with 25lbs. The pack felt great, held all my gear with no problem and has a fantastic assortment of pockets and zippered places to tuck gear away. The two side pouches and two zippered storage sections on the back are great for storing lots of things you'd want during a hike without having to go into the large pack area. After getting experience with this pack I went to several stores and went through all their 50L to 80L packs and could not find any that would be any worthwhile improvement over this pack regardless of price. What I found was the other packs lacked the nice arrangement of supplement storage areas and only a couple were less weight. The packs that were less weight were only different by a few ounces so not enough to trigger a purchase plus they were $250-$350 versus the $89 for the Kelty. (Regarding price I should add that if I found a pricy pack that was a decent improvement over the Kelty I'd buy it). Given the minimal difference in weight of the packs I looked at and the lack of peripheral spaces I'm sticking with the Redwing. The only other pack I had some familiarity with was a Mountainsmits L35 which was loaded with 36lbs. I hiked 1 mile with it over a trail and two outings of 4.5 miles over flat tar roads just to see what it was like. The pack was an excellent fit for me and very comfortable. I'd say it was as good as or slightly better than the kelty, hard to remember. I did not check out the pocket arrangements of that pack though so can't comment. The summary is I like the Redwing for it's comfort, it holds all the gear I would need for 5 days and has a super arrangement of side pockets and zippered back panels with zippered interior spaces and zippered outside back section. A good thing to do is to go to a store like REI that carries the Kelty Redwing 50 and many other quality packs and compare them side by side. Here are some of the Redwing features:1. Thick adjustable shoulder straps, three points of adjustment.2. Adjustable height waist belt that's angled to fit over your hip.3. Aluminum internal frame bar that can be bent to fit your back curve.4. Four straps tightening the pack rear to the frame.5. Two large zippered side pockets with lots of room to hold needed things without going into the main pack.6. Two lower water bottle side pouches.7. Internal pocket for holding a platypus with a hole at the pack top to run the waterline.8. Open areas behind the two side pockets to hold long thin things like treking poles.9. Zippered back flap exposing an internal area with 3 elastic topped cloth pockets with several sewn pockets for holding smaller things like cell phone, camera, mp3, toothbrush, classes in a case,& etc... Zippered internal pocket on the flap.10. Long zippered pocket on the back outside.11. Webbing on the pack bottom for attaching a mattress or other things like drying sox.12. A couple of cloth loops on the outside.13. Thick pack padding high and at the lower back.14. Top carrying handle plus a handle at the middle of the back section with side loops for attaching things.15. Excellent material with good stitching that I can't comment on for durability but from reviewers who have had the pack for a long time have no issues with. Again, the best thing to do would be to take a slow look at all the pack features at a store and compare them to other packs side by side, check fit, padding and adjustments and see what you think. For me it's an outstanding pack.Updated: 5/24/2013.The reason for the update is not to change the high praise of the original review. I went out for a month on the AT with this pack and stick to the review. I saw the updated version of this pack and don't care for the updates. The zippers are smaller, the pull strings thinner, the clasps smaller and light weight, the material they're on is thinner and less wide, the great back zipper pocket is gone and replaced by a zippered top of the pack pocket which for some might be considered and improvement but not by me. With a stuffed pack the top section will no be so useful as the back pocket. I'm updating the review to disassociate my review from the what I think is the 2013 version of the Kelty Redwing 50.

I bought this as a replacement to an earlier version of a Kelty Redwing backpack and this is the only one I could find in stock anywhere on the web. The product arrived as scheduled and has most of the same features and pockets as earlier editions.

Survived a crazy backpacking trip in Asia for 4 months and still looks great. Very durable and it's the perfect size for what I was doing.

Ridiculously large capacity pack, top of the line I would say. I guess I don't really need to get into detail since if you wanted there's a few youtube reviews that go over it as a whole.