As a kid from southern Utah, I’ve been backpacking across sandstone, down arroyos, and through willow thickets my whole life. This, in part, led me down a path of searching for ultralight or at least light-ish backpacks with attributes that make them ideal for canyon country backpacking. I have identified 5 features that make a backpack ideal for backpacking in the desert.
1. Abrasion Resistance
Desert backpacking is inherently destructive on gear. Sand gets into everything from shoes to tents to pockets to your hair. And sometimes that sand never comes out again—even after a good washing. When sand gets embedded in the fabric’s weave, it slowly eats away at it. After all, ground-down Navajo Sandstone is mostly just tiny jagged pieces of quartz, right? For this reason, I recommend packs made with highly durable fabrics for desert backpacking. Tried and true fabrics include 210d nylon grid fabrics such as Challenge Sailcloth UltraGrid, 500d or 1000d Cordura, and fully woven UHMWPE fabrics such as Challenge Sailcloth’s Ultra400X. All of these fabrics not only hold up to the repeated wear of butt-sliding down slickrock but also resist year-after-year exposure to sand.
To ensure that the Cliffrose is one of the most abrasion-resistant desert backpacking packs out there, Virga made a few interesting design choices. What you can’t see from the outside is that the bottom panel is comprised of TWO COMPLETE LAYERS of Ultra400X. That is a lot of super-durable material. And take a look at the bottom of the pockets. The same thing is going on there. Those pocket bottoms are also TWO COMPLETE LAYERS of Ultra400X. Butt slide over boulders all you want while wearing this pack. It’s made for it.
2. Large Pockets For External Water Carry
Large pockets are an essential part of any desert pack. Some of my favorite packs have gigantic bucket-style pockets for housing everything from water bottles to tents. I think this is a good design for desert backpacking where you may have to hike 20 miles between water sources.
With the Cliffrose, Virga decided to meander in a slightly different direction for water carry. This pack has super tall pockets that are only large when you want them to be. The bottoms are Ultra400X, while the rest of the pocket is UltraMesh, a very robust stretch mesh made by Challenge Sailcloth. This means that when you’re not carrying anything in the pockets, they more or less snug to the sides of the pack and stay out of the way of limestone or branches. But each pocket easily accommodates up to 2.5L+ of water! Platypus 2L bottles and Hydrapak 2L bottles both fit perfectly in these pockets. And because the pockets are super tall, this water is not at risk of flopping out onto the ground when you’re scrambling over a scree pile or ducking under willow and tamarisk branches. In addition to housing lots of stuff, these pockets do something most desert packs don’t, they maintain a stable center of gravity
A 2L Platypus in the side pocket with room to spare.
3. Robust Frame
This one is tricky because usually, a robust frame is going to dramatically increase the weight of a pack, making it less ideal for long days of desert backpacking. Traditional internal frame packs with robust frames like many of the higher-end Osprey packs or Mystery Ranch packs will carry heavy-ass water like a dream. But these packs also aren’t very light. To approach the carrying ability of traditional internal frame packs, Virga created a unique box-shaped frame that only weighs about 4.5oz on its own. Horizontal stays are sewn into the pack (one where the hip belt connects, and one where the shoulder straps connect). Two tubular stays then slide in from the top and create the rest of the pack’s structure.
The tubular stays alone would provide ample weight-carrying ability. They don’t really start flexing until well beyond 40lbs. But the horizontal stays are where the magic happens. They give the belt an anchor point, which is critical for load transfer. And they keep the pack’s structure so that the shoulder straps aren’t collapsing in on your neck. The result is the best load transfer of any lightweight pack I’ve experienced. And that’s the kind of load transfer I recommend for a desert pack.
In this photo, I’ve set each frame component roughly where it is within the pack.
4. ~2 lb Weight
Backpacks have come a long way in just the last 20 years. It’s no longer necessary to buy an 8lb pack if you want to guarantee durability and load transfer. There are dozens of pretty great packs out there now that most people will find useable or even fabulous that only weigh about 2 lbs or less.
And, among packmakers, 2lbs seems to be the new sought-after benchmark. It’s the weight that they’ve deemed acceptable for any multi-use backpacking pack. So it should be no surprise that the Virga Cliffrose comes in at just over 2lbs. It’s just over instead of just under 2 lbs because it’s on the durable and comfortable end of the spectrum. The Small is about 33oz and the Medium is about 35oz.
In the desert, the days are long, the water carries are uncertain, and the pack-passing scrambles are nearly guaranteed. For these reasons, I recommend packing all your weight into the densest possible package. Therefore, I think a ~2lb 55L pack is just the ticket.
5. Stiff Hip Belt
In my opinion, a robust frame is really no good without an accompanying stiff hip belt. You’ve probably seen it before: A belt creases and collapses after only a few trips. A pack that previously fit well is now too short. You start feeling pressure on your shoulders. The curve of the stays no longer rests in the small of your back.
Many mainstream (and therefore heavy) packs have stiff belts. Go to REI and feel a bunch of them. But this feature is a little less common among cottage industry packs. To solve this problem, Virga has laminated a sort of foamy plastic whose technical name escapes me onto the outside of a 3lb closed cell foam. The robustness of this belt perfectly matches the robustness of the frame. It doesn’t crease and collapse and therefore gives this pack the kind of load transfer every desert pack should have.
The left photo shows a collapsing belt. You can see the pack body dipping below the belt about 1.5” That’s a 1.5” loss of torso height. The dual-density belt on the right has no creasing or collapse.
Additional Nice-To-Have Desert Pack Features
White fabric can be nice for folks who backpack often in sunny and warm places. Anecdotally, it can keep your chocolate from melting as quickly. There are white packs available in the Cliffrose 55L presale right now!
Tons of attachment points accommodate ropes, packrafts, bear bags, guitars, and all sorts of other things one might haul into the desert. The Cliffrose has 27 of them.
Replaceable shoulder straps and hip belts. Once they wear out, clip on a new pair.
Large seam allowance. This is another nerd fact so feel free to exit out of this window now and go along with your day. But the Cliffrose has a larger seam allowance than most packs I’ve tested. This will do wonders for long-term durability—again, an important feature every desert backpacking pack should have. In my opinion.
If you’re interested in a Virga Cliffrose 55L, now’s the chance to get one. 50 of my favorite desert backpacking packs will be dropping in spring of 2025. The run is limited, just FYI.