Osprey Atmos AG 65 vs Rei Flash 55

You'll be more comfortable and all your stuff will remain dry. The plus side is that this was a very comfortable pack to wear when dry and my shoulders never became too sore over the course of the day. It was easy to control comfort by alternately tightening and loosening the waist belt so that the hips take more or less of the load.

I love my REI Flash 22 (and an REI Flash 18 before that). Very comfortable and surprisingly capable - have flown with it as my onebag on a budget airline with personal item only. The Flash 22 doesn't fold, but would lie flat in your luggage.

My dad went the opposite direction - he started out with an "ultralight" pack (Osprey Exos 38 IIRC) and eventually went with an Atmos 65. He just carried too much stuff for an ultralight pack. He didn't care much for high daily mileage, the walking part of backpacking is a necessary evil in his mind to get to the backcountry camps for fishing and generally relaxing. Trying to stuff all of his junk into a smaller pack with limited support wasn't much fun, so he got a bigger pack and he enjoys backpacking much more

You don’t have to be ultralight but you should seriously take into consideration the weight of the items and more importantly the size of the items in making your decision on what to buy. You won’t need that whole cook set, it’s going to take up a lot of space. Rei flash 55 backpack is a great pack that’s affordable and carries weights up to 30 pounds really well.

Now if you were going to be doing that, you would definitely have to be very careful with how you pack it, how much gear you take, how much food you p...

After much deliberation and no real limitation on budget I ended up with the REI Flash 55 for my JMT thru hike. Couldn’t have asked for a better bag. I was impressed with the weight and and functionality compared to the rest of the market.

They're really thick, really chunky, and they're all this mess material which is obviously going to allow some airflow. and you're not going to get sw...

All of the straps and attachment points on the pack are girth hitched to the daisy chain instead of being sewn into the pack seams. This lets you detach them, move them to a different location, or change their angles, as needed.REI even includes a mesh sack with the Flash 55 so you can store the straps you’ve removed between uses, and not lose them. Directions for attaching the straps are printed on the outside