Gear Review: The Kelty 50th Anniversary Pack

If you’re into backpacking, you probably couldn’t avoid reading something, somewhere, about the Kelty 50th Anniversary pack. Backpacker magazine kicked off the brewhaha when they picked it as an Editor’s Choice for 2002, touting it as a breakthrough in pack engineering, combining the best features of internal and external frame packs into one elegant engineering marvel. And for good reason: the pack is well-designed and boasts some nifty features like two shoulder straps, a waist belt, and a big sack to carry all your crap in.

But wait, there’s more! Kelty spent hours scouring the Philippines for just the right political prison camp to manufacture their ergonometric engineering marvel for them. Now, this is where the collective grey matter of corporations really shines through: you develop a new product, like the 50th Anniversary Pack, designed with new features, such as the Levitators®, but then you have it all stitched together by half-blind arthritic Filipino political dissidents and charge a premium retail price for it. This helps to assure that the stitching on the pack will tear apart during the middle of a wilderness trek (see the entry below this one) and gets people screaming your name from mountain summits. It’s exactly that kind of cutting-edge marketing that makes Kelty Numero Uno. Kelty, like its cohort, Backpacker magazine, has come of age and has learned what it takes to be a successful bidness in Amerika today. In recognition of this, we here at Fixitnow.com bestow the prestigious F. Walter Ellison Award for Bribery and Coersion on Kelty Corporation.

Congratulations to all the visionaries at Kelty Corporation, and especially the Accounting, Marketing, and Quality Assurance Departments!