Make an Ultralight Day Pack/ Assault Pack - £0-10, 5-60g!!!

On the Ultralight Ridgeway Trip a common issue I had was that where I camped wasn't always very near where I could collect food.

What tended to happen was that I'd set camp (or stay at a B&B) and then need to trek to pick up supplies. The problem was that I didn't really have anything apart from my main backpack to carry stuff in.

This got me thinking. I was already carrying a stuffsack for my clothes and another for my sleeping bag but neither was really suitable for [mis-]use as a pack. Naturally I didn't want to carry a daysack AND a stuff-sack. But what if one of the stuff-sacks was meaty enough for the task? I though that uprating a stuff-sack to be suitable for use as a pack would probably only add a few extra grammes to the total pack weight - worth the effort.

Materials

I thought the easiest thing to do would be to find a good quality SilNylon stuff-sack and then tweak it. Lifeventure do a very nice range of stuff-sacks and some of them feature a reasonbly heavyweight (for ultralighters) SilNylon fabric with taped seams and an integral lid - a perfect start for a pack.

• 15L SilNylon stuff-sack (LifeVenture)
• 1.5-2.5m 4mm Para-cord

Construction

There's very little to it! Simply unthread the existing cordage and replace it with your own much longer paracord. Feed the paracord through the cordlock and then tie the trailing ends around the pull-handle at the bottom of the stuff-sack.

That's it!

Notes

1. 1.5m of cord is the smallest amount that you can get away with as an over-the-shoulder bag. 2.5m is a better call for use as a pack. I've used 4mm cord so that it's a little more comfortable for carrying. If you really want to you can use a noose (shown) instead so that only a single length of cord is used as a shoulder strap.

2. I've used 'heavy' materials for this because the marginal weight of a pack over a stuff-sack is so low - less than 20g in my case.

3. I plan to make a version with a webbing shoulder strap for more comfort - see Mk 2 Ultralight Day Pack

4. You could use Cuben or Spinnaker for your materials but I've chosen to go for something cheap and strong.