SWD Movement Pack Review

February 3rd, 2024

Background

After spending years searching for a pack that's light yet durable and capable of carrying large loads with comfort, I have publicly fallen in love with the Superior WIlderness Designs (SWD) Big Wild. With a weight of 34oz, a capacity of 75L, and carrying comfort for 60lbs, it's an incredibly versatile pack because it feel capable of big things but light enough for small things.

But after two years, I reluctantly came to realize that there are some things for which 75L and a 28" frame is just annoyingly big, but my 8L running vest is not big enough. Situations where I thought having a smaller pack would just be more fun. These include gear intensive single-day adventures like backcountry skiing, canyoneering and climbing, packrafting, guiding day hikes, and biking to the grocery store. Of course, I also wanted something better for light and simple weekend backpacking. After six months of debating the idea with my minimalist conscience, I decided to purchase a small pack.

Why the Movement?

I knew rather precisely what I wanted out of a small pack:

• 35-40L capacity

  • My Movement is roughly 40L but can be easily compressed using the roll-top

• A rigid frame

  •  A lot of ultralight packs this size are frameless, which I believe can work well for ultralight backpacking. But frameless packs are very uncomfortable for technical single day adventures because even though the loads may be lighter, they are often lumpy and not voluminous enough to fill the pack nicely (creating a pseudo-frame).

  • My Movement has a tubular aluminum frame stay

• Absent or optional load lifters

  • While I believe tall frames and load lifters are essential for big load comfort, in a pack this size it was very important to me to be able to roll it down to the height of my shoulders. This allows for volume reduction and less interference with my head.

  • When stuffed full, the Movement is designed to use two accessory straps as improvised load lifters (pseudo-extending the frame)

• Adequate torso size

  • While I don't need the pack to extend above my shoulders, I did want it to extend to my shoulders

  • My Movement is a custom XL torso size of approximately 23"

• Strap versatility

  • I wanted plenty of attachment points for carrying bulky things like skis or ropes, and potentially adding aftermarket pockets

  • The Movement is built with plenty of little webbing loops sewn in and comes with accessory straps that are moveable and removeable.

• Simple pockets allowing for easy access to water bottles and small items

  • My Movement has excellent side pockets that don't interfere with ski carry, and optional hipbelt pockets that are also excellent.

• Extremely durable fabric

  • To resist cutting by ski edges and ice axes, high speed bushwacking (aka skiing), and abrasion from hauling and squeezing through slot canyons.

  • My Movement is made completely of Challenge Ultra 400X

• Light weight

  • The last consideration. If all of the other criteria are met without excess, a pack will be inherently light.

  • My Movement is 30oz with all of the optional features, or 20oz in frameless mode with a webbing hipbelt.

Focusing on meeting the above criteria actually narrowed my search quite acutely, but a few other packs came close to making the cut. The primary contender was actually the Hyperlite Mountain Gear Southwest 40. Despite my aversion to Hyperlite brought on by their failure to make comfortable large-capacity packs, I believe their design is well-suited to a 40L multisport pack. While the Southwest 40 would probably work fine for this use, it had only one advantage over the Movement; dual frame stays. For a pack of this size, I correctly judged that to not be very important in the face of it's drawbacks. The advantages the Movement has over the Southwest include:

• Much more generous and sag-resistant padding on the shoulder straps and hipbelt

• Ability to remove the hipbelt and use a webbing belt instead

• Ultra 400x is significantly more durable than DCH fabric

• Moveable and removable straps made of more durable webbing

• Custom sizing

I briefly considered the Durston Kakwa 40. While it's an excellent pack, for this use I ruled it out quicky due to the lack of strap versatility, fixed load lifters, and less burly fabric. At least a few other cottage companies are probably capable of making a pack for this use, but most of the existing designs out there are focused on ultralight backpacking and lack the versatility and durability for multisport use. 

I was actually more interested in pursuing a pack from a mainstream brand such as the Patagonia Descensionist or Osprey Mutant. I used both of these packs for at least a year and found the torso sizes to be intolerably short and feature sets to be suboptimal for backpacking. Contrarily, I also spent time using the REI Flash 55, which is a great light-ish mainstream backpacking pack. But it's fragile fabrics and large size make it irrelevant for this use. While the prices of mainstream packs can be attractive, their lack of longevity and functionality is disappointing.

As the trip went on and my food and water load shrunk rapidly, the Movement adapted well. With 5 days remaining I did away with the load lifters, then when my load dropped below 20lbs I switched to the webbing hipbelt and removed the frame. On the last day I attempted to go without a hipbelt at all, but my shoulders were sore after an hour. I believe webbing hipbelts really punch above their weight in terms of comfort in the 10-25lb range.

Since the long trip, I have used the Movement for another four-day trip in Grand Canyon, a three-day trip in the Mazatzal Wilderness, and a two-day trip in the Pine Creek Wilderness. I found it a joy to use on all of these trips and perform exactly as I expected. There are many backpacks that would work fine for these trips, but the Movement works excellently for them. For me, the primary reason that most technical climb/ski packs don't work for hiking is lack of water accessibility and inadequate suspension. The Movement solves those issues. Some photos of it in action:

Packrafting

Packrafting gear is extremely bulky, and even on day trips having a backpack with huge capacity is nice. I didn't buy the Movement for packrafting. Nevertheless, I am excited about the prospect of using it for single-day trips with lightweight boating gear (Alpacka Refuge et al), or even on multiday trips with the most ultralight boating gear (Supai raft, trekking pole paddles).

I have taken the Movement on one packrafting outing on the Verde River. I was able to complete the 10-mile route in 4 hours, which was pretty fun. The hiking felt fast thanks to the light and small load.

While the Movement works for packrafting thanks to it's versatile strapping and generous side pockets, I will mostly continue to use my Big Wild for this. Since buying the Movement and Refuge, I have done two packrafting day trips with my Big Wild - because I wanted to bring my Valkyrie and safer whitewater gear.

Skiing

Unlike packrafting, backcountry skiing was one of my primary motivations for buying the Movement, because I really felt like I didn't have a good pack for it. My Big Wild is excessively bulky, and the big-brand ski packs I tried were very uncomfortable. Having a comfortable pack is very important to me for skiing, because skis are heavy. Here in Arizona I don't carry skis up steep couloirs very often, but I do carry skis on long approaches. I knew that the low-profile suspension design of the Movement would be extremely comfortable both for carrying weight and for the dynamic movement of skiing. I knew that I wouldn't use the side pockets while skiing, but I knew they wouldn't get in the way either. I knew that the versatile straps would allow me to carry skis with ease, and I knew that Ultra400x would make for the most durable ski pack on the market.

The biggest remaining question mark was accessibility, truly a buzzword in the ski world. Easy access to skins/clothes/gloves/helmets/goggles speeds up transition times. But I'm not too worried about that because honestly, I don't make a lot of changes to clothes/gloves/goggles while I'm backcountry skiing, and I'm pretty accustomed to organizing items like this inside a roll-top pack. I often keep my skins in my jacket and I enjoy storing my hemet in the main compartment rather than strapping it to the outside with a fussy stretchy net that seems to be ubiquitous in mainstream ski packs.

Here, it's worth comparing the organization of the Movement to other ski packs, especially the two leading high-end ski packs: the Hyperlite Crux 40 and the new but booming Raide LF40, both of which cost more than the Movement. Both of these packs are designed with organization and access to ski gear in mind, and do a very good job at that. But, they do so at the expense of simplicity and weight, and don't provide good side pockets, reducing versatility. I will also spend a moment discussing the zippered backpanel access that many ski packs have. This is awesome for skiing because it allows access while skis are strapped on, but comes at one big cost: longevity. Zippers that go around tight bends of fabric with stiff foam are prone to becoming difficult to use, and eventually failing completely. In my time at a shop that repairs and sells second-hand gear, I have seen this happen many times. Unfortunately, these zippers are often impossible to replace even by skilled sewists. It worries me to see these companies using premium materials that will last forever and a zipper design that just won't.

What is important is accessibility and organization of snow safety tools. Many people have been skiing with single-compartment packs like the Osprey Mutant or Hyperlite Porter for years and simply putting their shovel and probe inside. I knew I could do this with my Movement as a fallback option, but I had personal experience doing it with my old Mutant and was seeking something better. Shovel blades can sink to the bottom of a single-compartment pack and probes can get tangled. Both of these things can get my fragile emergency puffy torn or wet after digging a snow pit. I ordered my Movement with a solid fabric front pocket to try something new.

While I was pleased with my ski-strap securement of my probe and shovel handle, the knowledgeable friends I polled had mixed feelings about it. In my testing it worked well, but has some drawbacks. The parts that extend out of the pocket are very prone to snagging when ducking under tree branches, enough to be fairly hazardous. Worse is probably that the shovel blade and my snow saw are not directly secured in the pocket. They are firmly held in place by the tension of the pocket, but I can pull them out without removing the strapped items. It's hard to imagine, but it would be a real bummer if they slipped out unnoticed during a crash. Lastly, this pocket is the perfect size to fit a lightweight shovel blade, but would be really tight to fit the largest shovels on the market.

For these reasons, I decided to cut off the pocket and build a zippered one to replace it. Obviously it is somewhat unique that I had the ability to do this, but the good news is that SWD has plans to soon release a similar pocket that will surely be even better than mine.

Biking

I learned in college that having a pack with a frame and a hipbelt is awesome for bike commuting because one can loosen the shoulder straps and it just floats off the back. But in taking my Big Wild to the grocery store I learned that having a frame that is too tall is terrible for biking because it interferes with the helmet and prevents looking up. 

Having a pack that costs over $300 for bike commuting is ridiculous, but I have the Movement for the other reasons above. It happens to also work perfectly for biking. I like things that are versatile. It's also very nice that the Ultra fabric is waterproof.

Conclusion

While the minimalist in me loved the idea of allowing myself only a running vest and my Big Wild, I use backpacks enough that having three of them feels very justified. The two-pack quiver is very achievable for those who carry big loads less often than I do, i.e. most people. I recommend a variety of 50-55L packs for most users in my Backpacking Big 4 Recommendations guide (this works quite well for Joelle with a running vest and her SWD Long Haul 50). But I use backpacks for wildly varrying loads, and quite often at that. I've found joy in using more appropriate tools for each job. For me, the SWD Movement is great at everything it does, which is a lot more things than other backpacks in this size and weight class. 

If anything, the fact that my SWD Big Wild weighs only 4oz more than my Movement is a testament to how amazing that pack is. In fact, now that I have seen the incredibly wide range of loads for which the Movement works, I may be interested in pushing my Big Wild further into it's niche by upgrading to the 95L. Maybe someday...

*Disclosure: During and after I wrote my Big Wild review, I became more friendly with SWD and have frequently discussed product feedback with them, They were kind enough to give me a discount on this pack, but I still paid a lot of money for it and would've happily pay more because I like it so much.