Gossamer Gear Fast Kumo: A Light, Pretty Summer Backpacking Pack
Camping · Published 7/5/2023 ·
I have a Lightning 45 — a light, tough backpack I’ve owned for a while. I don’t know how it is for everyone else, but for me it’s been great: it holds enough for winter backpacking too, and I’ve been really happy with it. The thing is, in summer I end up with about 15 liters of empty space. In other words, summer trips only need something around 30 liters, and since the pack never fills up, rolling the roll-top all the way down just looks ugly and not very pretty. So I decided to add a dedicated summer backpacking pack and started searching.
Conditions
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Light — goes without saying, but there’s no reason a pack should get heavier while holding less. Right?
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A usable hip belt — summer or not, the weight of camping gear (food aside) is at least 3–5 kg. Add food and you’re looking at 7–10 kg.
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Pretty — I’m just done with black, gloomy hiking gear and hiking clothes. Bright, cheerful, bold — all fine by me. It absolutely has to be pretty.
Search results
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Zpacks series — a runaway winner on weight, but way too expensive. With Dyneema’s potential still not fully tapped, I didn’t want to drop nearly 500,000 won on a backpack.
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Gossamer Gear Kumo — actually, I’d owned a Kumo once before. Back then I wasn’t set up for ultralight packing, so it eventually got the boot for lack of capacity.
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Gossamer Gear Fast Kumo — a new Kumo came out. The back pad doubles as a sit pad, and the shoulder pockets widened out like a trail-running vest, now built to hold water bottles.
The problem.
It’s not sold in Korea…
That was the biggest issue. I’m not used to buying from overseas, and there’s basically no recourse if something goes wrong and you need service — assuming they’ll even ship it to you.
I asked the Korean retail site…?
No plans yet, they said. So importing it myself was the only answer…
But I’d never used a package-forwarding service, never dealt with customs, and it was genuinely hard to buy. Still, I found a site that ships to Korea and placed the order. When you pay overseas you really should pay in dollars, not won — I didn’t know that and paid in won… well, it’s all experience, I guess… Shipping alone ran about 70,000 won, too…
Shipping…
It took almost exactly a month. Express carriers like FedEx or DHL seem to have a process that uses the item name to streamline customs clearance in advance, but regular air parcels seem to go through a step where customs officers inspect each item one by one and assess the tax. So even after it reached Incheon customs, it sat there for about 10 days. When I asked, all I got back was: when there’s a big backlog of shipments it takes a while, so just wait. I’d checked the FTA box on the pre-declaration, but in the end it was ruled not “made in USA,” so I paid the tax. I figured since it’s a US-bound product from a US brand, it’d be made in the USA — honestly, I didn’t really know… Turns out the fabric is Korean, assembly is in Vietnam, and the design (engineering) is American ^^
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The design has that classic Gossamer Gear shape — like a forsythia-yellow bindle on your back. The hip belt is fairly sturdy, and the back panel has a foam mat you can use as a sit pad, which also keeps sweat from building up against your back. If you want to cut weight or don’t need the mat, you can pull it out and hike without it. The accent points are all in orange — my favorite color — and the pack is a bright gray overall, so it looks bright and cheerful. The bottom, which tends to get dirtier than the rest, is made from black fabric.
I hung it next to my old Lightning 45 and took a photo. Sure enough, the hip belt is a bit flimsier and the pack is shorter. The Kumo maxes out at 36 liters, but that’s the total with all the external pockets included — the main compartment feels more like 15–20 liters.
The back foam was intact and the whole thing arrived in good condition, no defects. Since exchanges are basically impossible, I was really hoping for a good unit, so that was a relief. Gossamer Gear products are built with lightweight materials at the expense of durability, so after a few years of use they end up patched and stitched here and there — but I plan to enjoy that, that little bit of character, as I use it.
Ah… I feel a swell of national pride. The tag shows it uses fabric from Hyosung, a Korean company. Knowing Korean fabric is traveling all over the world feels pretty great.
They’ll probably sell it in Korea someday, but if I need it now, I just have to buy it now. It came to about 350,000 won total, and I bought it not from the official US site but from a site called GGG.
Shipping was via USPS — there was no other option. If it’s a piece of gear you need in a hurry, going with an express carrier like UPS or FedEx is probably better for your sanity when buying from overseas.
Total weight of the pack: 610 g
Thank you.
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