My pack is a very expensive job that is out of your price range and may not even be available - BUT - it is modular as in I can remove any parts of it.

One thing I have found is that if I want to carry over 20 pounds, its much more comfortable to add the wide waist band even without the internal support. Going up to maybe 30 to 35 pounds I leave out the support, but I were going over that I would put in the frame work to help put the entire load on my hips.

If you just use the pack as a sack with straps, you want it to have really good shoulder straps. Just an aside - in the old days we bought the wide hip belts separately and added them to our external frame packs. A wide hip belt on a minimalist pack sack would probably be an improvement.

Pat-rick. There is a single smiley face on the upper left of a long strip of funny symbols when you are posting. Click on it to get an array of smileys.
Jim