How to Put On and Fit Your Pingora Outro Backpack

In this video, our founder explains how to adjust the Pingora Outro for fit and stability on the trail.

Once you have your Pingora Outro backpacking pack packed correctly, it's time to pick it up and put it on. Sometimes if it's really heavy, you want to balance it on your knee to prevent you from ruining your back. And then you use your legs and the lumbar pad get in the small of your back. 

Initial Setup

Clip the waist belt, but you don't have to tighten it all the way. You can keep it a little bit loose. Stand up.

We have a cell phone and flasks here in the harnesses. I advise people to get the sternum strap tightened a little bit first so you can center all of that gear so it's not in your armpit. 

Then go ahead and tighten your shoulder straps a little bit. Get that lumbar pad right in the small of your back. And that should be feeling really good.

Load Lifters and Stability

Go ahead and tighten my load lifters up here just a little bit. And that pulls the load forward to keep it from wobbling back and forth and forward and backward. 

One way you know the torso size is incorrect—like too tall—is that if you have a big gap up here in a triangle. Some people get this big old gap up here and it obviously too tall. So to compensate people will pull the load lifter super tight. And while it might feel good for a moment, your pack will wear out, and you are not going to have like an efficient hiking experience because of all that movement;  it's just not fitting correctly. 

Make sure the backpack fits you. We want that curve to be preserved.

Shoulder and Hip Balance

The shoulder harnesses don't have to be resting on your shoulders the whole time. Like right now there's just a teeny little gap. And then if I want to rest my hips a little bit, I can loosen the waist belt. And now the weight is, you know, like 50/50 on my shoulders and my waist belt.

Same thing down here on the harness. We have load stabilizer straps on the waist belt, Load stabilizer straps act as sway bars to keep the bottom of the pack stable and from moving. And so I just give those a snug. They don't have to be super tight on each side. 

Proper Waist Belt Placement

I've taken a waist belt off of an Outro just to give you a very clear example of where to wear the waist belt on your body. So I'm just going to start by pushing my thumbs into the soft side of my waist and then I'm going to press down and then it's going to get kind of a little bit painful, but that's where your iliac crest is. That's the top of your hip bone and that's where we want to put the weight of the backpack.

So if I put this waist belt on without the backpack, my iliac crest is right here. And I'm gonna put the top of the waist belt maybe like a half inch above that. And then it provides a nice platform for all that weight from the backpack to rest on. 

Torso Length Adjustment

To get the load resting on your hip bones, you have to have the right torso length measurement. And so once you know your torso length measurement, you can just adjust the waist belt on the Outro to fit your torso length perfectly. We have small, medium and large. I'm actually a small, so I'm between 42 and 47 cm torso length. I can just adjust this by sliding the waist belt out and sliding it into the proper location for a small. And then I'm ready to go. 

Pro Tips for Trail Adjustments

A pro tip is that when you're backpacking throughout the day, the pack can be adjusted as needed. You are loosening it a little bit at times. Sometimes when you go downhill you loosen the waist belt to drop the weight onto your shoulder so you have a lower center of gravity. Sometimes you lift it up and put all the weight onto your hip bones so that the weight isn't on your shoulder to make the pack more comfortable. 

You can make small adjustments throughout the day and then sometimes you're just really hot and so you open this up. So keep adjusting it as you need throughout the day. And yeah, this is ready to go. Let's leave the driveway and go to the trail head!

Check out our Pingora Outro 40 and Outro 55 backpacking packs