Time for a new hydration pack.

So I'm back in the hunt to run an ultra. I'm fortunate that we have one that starts only a five minute drive from my front door. This will have a lot of obvious advantages, a good nights sleep the night before the race in my own bed, a ready made support team consisting of my wife Jo and friends, an intimate knowledge of, and the opportunity to train over the actual course, and of course a familiar setting to suffer within afterwards. I'm not fooling myself, I have read enough about ultras, done some half decent mileage in the past, and self aware enough to know it WILL hurt.

The North Face 100 has been described by ultra running luminaries, such as Dean Karnazes, as the hardest 100Km race there is. It is run during May in the Blue Mountains, so the weather can be variable at best. The first year it was run I had a friend who was participating, I met him at the last check point at about 11pm, just as it started snowing. By this stage he was also losing his ability to see, so the world was already a white out to him. The course is at times remote from services, not that far, just difficult to get to.

Because of this the organisers require you to carry some fairly sensible equipment, such as;

• Long sleeve thermal top and pants
  
• Waterproof jacket with hood
  
• Beenie
  
• Thermal gloves
  
• Hi visability vest
  
• Head lamp
  
• Back up light
  
• mobile phone
  
• compass
  
• Whistle
  
• Space blanket
  
• Water & windproof matches
  
• Fire starting block
  
• Compression bandage
  
• Dry sack to keep compulsory clothing dry
  
• 2 liters of water
  
• Ziplock for personal rubbish
  
• Waterproof map case and maps
  

And be prepared to carry

• long water proof pants
  
• 100 weight longsleeve fleece top

I had to keep this requirement in mind when researching what hydration pack to buy. I studied reviews, and a few stood out. Any of the Salomon packs seemed to be rated highly, and the CamelBak Octane series also seemed good.

So off to the shops I went, due to its location Katoomba has a number of outdoor retailers, despite its reletively small size. As i did the rounds I was disapointed to find a derth of hydration packs, until I stepped into Mountain Equipment. The other stores focussed on there own name brands, and limited other options. ME on the other hand seemed to focus on quality, and had a decent range.

One brand immediately stood out, Osprey. I had a look at some of the packs hanging there. The build quality was exceptionable, attention to detail good, and seemed to have some inovative ideas. As I hadn't seen these mentioned on any of the forums I headed home and Internet-ed up. I could not find any customer reviews, but I read a bunch of store reviews, and visited the companies web site. I liked what I read and saw. Back in the car, to the store, and $180AU later it was mine.

In my absence the young bloke working at the store had taken a bit of closer look at the pack after my initial scrutiny and was very impressed, and informed me the reason I could not find that much about it was because they were recently released.

Mine's blue

Going to give it a go tomorrow, just a small outing.