Building the Outer Persona: a three-season pack

While I’ve been humping my Bergan external frame pack around for almost a decade (and I’m very pleased with it!), I’ve been starting to wonder if maybe it isn’t…overkill. As an aspiring minimalist, I like to try and pare my outdoors kit down to the bare essentials, and a large frame pack with lots of attachment points—in a gear version of Jevon’s Paradox (as one’s pack increases in capacity, the expanded space cannot help but be filled)—only makes it too easy to throw in everything but the kitchen sink.

I realized then that while the Bergan is perfectly suited to be a winter pack—able to carry a tarp, sleeping pad, and blanket/sleeping bag, plus a drybag of spare clothes and other seasonal necessities—I might need something a bit more modest for the rest of the year.As always, I turned to the GFFA to find something that might fill the vacancy.
I came up with a handful of examples from the films:
young Anakin carries a dressed-up late-‘90s hardpack when leaving Tatooine
Luke carries Yoda in a blue-gray milsurp-y something (standard-issue pilot gear?),
and these three, carried by Rebel troops on Hoth and Endor respectively:

The ‘Endor soft pack’ at right is apparently some kind of Vietnamese something-or-other (the wooden toggles suggest utilitarian CommBloc influence) and practically unobtainable in 2018. The basic design, however, (canvas construction, top flap, two outer pockets) is very similar to a widely-available Czechoslovakian one which Endor troop costumers often use, the CSLA Velká polní Vzor 60. (Apparently these are often referred to as Model 60, because they are associated with the M60 uniform, but the backpack has a complicated and much older pedigree. In origin they date back to the Austro-Hungarian WWI model, which was simplified pre-WWII, and then modified to incorporate the German-inspired straps.)
These packs are super cheap and check all the boxes for what I was looking for, so I snagged one up for $14 (free shipping, whoo!).

Because I strongly believe that something is not really yours until you have changed it somehow, I had some mods in mind to make it my own:
-The leather strap running from the leather between-the-shoulders connector is designed to attach to one’s equipment belt (or perhaps going under the pack to the D-ring on the front:
However, this doesn’t serve much use to me, so instead of messing with this strap and its tight, fiddly holes, I rolled it up and added it to my scrap box.
-The stock strap system is totally crazy (I had flashbacks to my old M56 spaghetti strap sleeping bag carrier!), so I simplified it by—instead of just removing them—sewing the narrow secondary straps down on top of the main ones, for visual interest!

BUT, I liked the clippy hooks more than the larger wire ones. With the double thickness of webbing, I had to file out a larger slot in the clips to accommodate both straps. Then it was time to rip out stitching, swap hooks, reassemble, and restitch, plus straighten out one of the large straps which came with a twist:

I also gave the main shoulder attachment hooks a few whacks with a hammer to close them a bit and help prevent them from slipping off the D-rings as easily.
Because the on-screen ERT Vietnamese packs close with wooden toggles, I removed the top flap’s strap and keeper to clean it up a bit. The stock friction buckles are a little slow for my tastes, so I found a new home for my final remaining side-release buckle from my Bergan pack refurbish project. I replaced the top flap’s friction buckle with the metal SRB, then shortened the drawstring by 30cm, whipped the raw ends, and added a cord stop. These changes make it much easier to access the inner contents if needed. Things needed more frequently are kept in the outer pockets, which I can usually squeeze my hand into without bothering with the buckles much.
To add a little bit of asymmetry and suggest some past user repair, I swapped one of the pockets’ web straps for some vintage 1950s webbing. I then installed the USGI shoulder pads from my Bergan onto the shoulder straps, because narrow or unpadded webbing is never fun!

The final touch to get to the GFFA aesthetic was, of course, to weather the metal hardware. After all these tweaks were complete, I transferred the important items from my Bergan, and headed out for a 4-5 mile hike. Even with 20 pounds and no frame, it rode very comfortably the whole trip.

ADDENDUM: Since making the above mods and using the pack multiple times a week, I have gone back and made a few more ergonomic tweaks. While wearing the pack on dayhikes, I found that it needed some more structure, so to support the back and keep my back sweat from soaking into the main compartment, I cut an 11×14-inch section of foam sleeping pad (with top corners rounded) and slipped this into the rear portion. This can be removed at camp and makes a handy insulating seat.

After introducing the foam padding, I got sick of the inside divider falling open (causing me access the back instead of the front section when I reached inside) so I worked a buttonhole at the top of the divider and attached a wooden toggle under the drawstring to keep the sections separate. Much more organized!

While I had thought the shoulder straps’ large wire hooks were tight enough, they still had a tendency to slip out, usually at the most inopportune time. To simplify, I removed the hooks, and permanently attached the straps to the upper rings:

Finally, after the original drawstring eventually frayed and wore out where it was gripped by the cord stop, I replaced it with a braintanned deerskin cord. Since it’s cut from a cohesive material (instead of multiple fiber strands woven together), it can’t fray or unravel.

I also had a friend 3D print some of the Endor commando backpack greeblies and attached them with butterfly pinbacks.

Researching, crafting, photographing, and writing this site takes a lot of time and energy. If you’ve enjoyed reading, have learned something from this post, or will use it as inspiration for a future project, please consider supporting my work with a small donation below! Thank you!