No kidding about backpack.woot 
If only they would get the 50L S/M & M/L adjustable packs or other large packs from Kelty. I still need a Lakota 65L and a Redwing 50L.
As for the pack, I picked one of these up for my little bro a few weeks ago and he loves it. Great pack for teens/smaller people as it is not adjustable.
Kelty makes great packs with fabulous lumbar support, high quality and durable fabric, with fantastic customer service. If you’re interested in this pack, we’ve had extensive discussions recently about the Kelty Shrike 32 Daypack, Kelty Avocet 30 Backpack, and Kelty Courser 40 Backpack; this pack was offered during the most recent woot-off and there are helpful comments in that thread from people who purchase the Redwing the last time that it was offered.
“LightBeam aluminum stay” is an external c-beam laying on top of your spinal column. Presumably Kelty’s target demographic’s doing their hiking on a non-slip coated pavement: if I’m somewhere I might fall I want that thing the hell away from my spinal cord. I bike so I tried returning it – Woot would have none of that (read the small print), so I went for option #2: the beam is easy to remove. With my usual load: a netbook, a lunch box, and an occasional bunch of groceries I can live without a frame.
If you do want an actual internal frame that isn’t strategically positioned where it can push a vertebra into quadraplegic, the mothership has a couple of outdoor products in this price range that should fit the bill.
Other than that it’s a good backpack. Unless you fill 'er up and try to use both the side pocket and the water bottle pocket under it at the same time. (With the pack mostly empty and only the tire patch kit in the side pocket it’s ok.) It has a very decent hip strap and enough loops to keep its loose ends (once you adjust it to size 32 waist) from getting caught in your bike chain.
Overall it’s a pretty good deal for $55.
Forum discussion on Kelty packs and links to the previous Kelty item sales on Woot.
Color kills the deal.
If you are biking with a backpack this size, then you are to blame if you get into an accident. Having so much weight so high up will make you unstable. You should at least get some tourist stuff like panniers that keeps the weight low.
Not that bad once you see it personally, got one for the wife thinking about the color, ended up being not too shabby and picked up one for myself last time they where on sale, also unless you are doing cover ops a bright color is easier to spot when camping/backpacking.
Was waiting for Woot to offer this pack again but after reading more reviews I’m concerned about the safety issues related to the metal frame resting directly on the spine w/o any padding between. Apparently that’s a design change from the previous version of the Redwing 44. I’m bummed b/c I was so looking forward to snagging one of these. Just watched the video on Backcountry EDGE and it looks great. If it weren’t for that external metal stay it’d be a no-brainer. I’m on the fence again.
Welcome to backpack.woot.com …because there are no other sports other than hiking and camping. Besides, is camping really a sport?
What does 'Torso Fit Range: 14.5" - 18.5" ’ mean?
I’ve read in other posts that the aluminum is bendable so I doubt it could do damage to bone. I’d be more worried about the rocks you may hit lol.
Picked up about a month ago since its offered so much. its a great pack! Would be fine for an overnight hike, a bit large for a day hike but serviceable. I got mine for this and as a carry on so I don’t have to bring luggage. It is very comfortable even when fully loaded and distributes weight well. The color is fine for a guy, its like a grey/blue color. Its not bright blue/cyan. I’m a big guy and it fit me fine but my petite GF tried it on and it was too big so small peeps be wary! It’s well made and durable. Ivthink the spine bar is padded and bent in a way I am not really concerned about being injured. Overall an awesome pack for a great price!!
It’s a non-issue. Unless you’re hurtling along on a bike at 20 miles per hour and take a fall on top of the thing because you were stupid and loaded it with 35 pounds of gear, I wouldn’t worry about it. I recently took a sliding spill on my back with my trusty but bulky kelty external frame, so I bought the previously wooted kelty courser 40. Now I feel a lot less topheavy, which is better for offtrail hiking, not to mention ducking under branches. Downside is carries a lot less and is not quite as comfortable. This would have been a great pack by the courser was big enough for the two or three day exursions I have time for these days.
Some of us do purchase items purposefully . . . and covert ops have nothing to do with it . . . your average deer, for instance, will see this blue as a “red flag” so to speak.
Deer are essentially red-green color blind like some humans. Their color vision is limited to the short (blue) and middle (green) wavelength colors. As a result, deer likely can distinguish blue from red, but not green from red, or orange from red. Therefore, it appears that a hunter would be equally suited wearing green, red, or orange clothing but perhaps slightly disadvantaged wearing blue.
For a more detailed explanation: deer are dichromats, meaning that the color-detecting cone cells in their retinas contain two visual pigments, blue-sensitive and green-sensitive. (Normal humans are trichromats, with three visual pigments.) Deer would be able to discriminate shades of blue and blue-green from other colors but would have trouble distinguishing colors in the green-to-red range. Reds would look black or dark gray, and some greens would be indistinguishable from white. This would be very similar to the color vision deficiency in humans known as protanopia.
In deer and other nocturnal to crepuscular animals, the cone cells are greatly outnumbered by rod cells that give them “black and white” vision. With the help of the reflective tapetum lucidum layer that produces that eerie “eyeshine” in a car’s headlights, their night vision is far superior to ours. (We’re not only night-blind compared to deer but colorblind compared to many other animals. Most birds have four types of visual pigments, Australian lungfish have five, and mantis shrimps have more than ten.)
As evolutionary biologists usually explain it, it all starts with our distant mammalian ancestors, who were little guys that came out mainly at night to stay out of the way of predators such as dinosaurs. They descended from reptiles that would have had good color vision, but at some point they lost all but two of the genes that code for visual pigments. Think of this as a cost-saving measure - it cut out the less useful color-detecting cells and made more room in the retina for the more useful night-vision cells.
Once the dinos were out of the way, the early mammals radiated to fill many niches, both diurnal and nocturnal. In most of those niches, including large herbivores such as deer, the long lost visual pigments weren’t missed much. When our Old World primate ancestors took to the trees, a few mutants that produced a new kind of yellow/red-sensitive pigment had an advantage in detecting the ripest fruits and most succulent (and least toxic) young leaves. They survived better and produced more offspring than their red-blind (dichromat) relatives and became the founders of our family line.
COLOR KILLS THE DEAL.
Right, why add more pointy bits?
It’s not that bendable, there’d be no point in using it as a frame if it was.
As for
– doesn’t matter how much weight you have in it, it’s about you landing on top of it.
Do they have panniers for skis, skates, or for when you slip & roll down the slope? — Biking is not the only activity where you could do a flip and land on top of this thing at your weight times your speed squared.
Like I said, the beam is easily removable, mine’s gathering dust somewhere in the wardrobe.
is it a good pack for everyday use such as for school? Is it bigger than normal school bags? thanks.
Picked this one up last time it was on Woot and it fit great right out of the box (I’m 5’9" 180 lbs). Took it up above 14,000 feet on Mt. Bierstadt and was very happy, although this pack is a bit too big for your average day hike. Works very well as a carry-on also, you can easily put 4-5 days worth of clothes and a couple pairs of shoes in here. Blue color looks great too - definitely recommend this pack.
It’s 2650 cubic inches so it’s pretty big, but it would be great for school. Holds a 17" laptop and plenty of books/clothes/small woodland creatures.