A sad report indeed: the Golite Quest pack that I bought last June has suffered a major failure. Halfway through the last day of our Eastern Galloway backpack I put on the pack and tightened the hipbelt as usual, then… a sickening rip!. The webbing holding the main buckle at the waist had torn right out of the hipbelt material. Fortunately it happened near the end of the backpack but I had to carry it the last 6 miles using only the shoulder straps, not at all pleasant when carrying around 75% of the weight for two people. I’ve added more information about the failure to the main site review.
For interest, our walk logs reveal the exact usage figures for the Quest up to the point of failure: 42 backpacking days and 344 miles using that pack.
The Golite website says that returns must be taken back to the retailer in the first instance, and I dropped off my pack at Winwood Outdoor in Keswick with a covering letter. They said they would deal with it and get back to me, so it’s a case of waiting to see what happens. Golite has one of those guarantee statements that says ‘…for the life of the product’, whatever that means, but in any case the failure was within the UK norm of 12 months that applies to most products here.
The failure resulted in an unintentional gear test: what happens when you carry all the weight of a backpack entirely on the shoulders with no hipbelt support at all?. It isn’t too bad for a little while but it soon begins to tell.
The first symptom was expected from the start: a niggling sharp ache just below the base of my neck at the back, a feeling well known to many backpackers that can often result from a pack with unsuitable back length or other bad adjustment (or even a perfectly fitting pack after walking on the flat for a long distance, especially at a brisk pace or with a heavy weight).
The second was unexpected: a curious straining ache all around the base of my rib cage, which overpowered the mild neck pain after about 3 miles and became the main source of discomfort. I’m glad the failure didn’t happen on the first day when the load was heaviest with many more miles ahead.
7 Comments
Geoff - you should always carry voluminous amounts of duct tape for just these sort of eventualities
Be interesting to hear what GoLites anlysis reports - I;ve had one eye on this model since I managed to play with one at the BPC AGM
John,
It’s a good idea to have something like that, as it was I didn’t have anything that would hold the belt in. All that’s needed is a length of something that would go around the waist and fasten together firmly.
Despite the failure it has been a fantastic pack and I would buy another. Now I’m tightening the hipbelt on my Golite LiteSpeed more carefully:- I first pull it just fingertip-tight, then tighten all the other straps and finally breathe in, pull the stomach right in and tighten the hipbelt buckle slowly!.
if this happens to any one else again use a tumpline.
just buy a simple webbing belt
Be interesting to see what transpired with Golite.
The saga is still ongoing.
Golite are now owned by Timberland but still effectively retain some degree of autonomy. The communication between the two sides is as you might expect: poor from the customer point of view. I had to chase it up after a few weeks, firstly via Timberland customer service (excellent chap there) who discovered that the Golite people had no record of the failed pack arriving from Winwoods by DHL carrier. The GL people said that a new pack would be with me ’shortly’ - that was on 1st. August but the emails are still very slowly passing to and fro between TL / GL / Winwoods.
Any further news yet Geoff?
This very day Winwoods telephoned to say that the new Quest had arrived at their shop. They said they would send it on to me right away.
I guess that email I sent to the Golite Europe manager must have had some effect, he received it on his iPhone and replied within 5 minutes saying he would get it sorted.