Summit day backpack

Hi, I was wondering what people's strategy is when going on a long weekend trip that includes a day trip without all your gear.

So I need a overnight pack to carry tent, sleeping bag, ect, but on one day I only need enough for like 8 hours, a typical day hike.

Do you pack a day-pack in your large pack and add the couple pounds or just take the large pack on the day trip with only a few things you need.

Or maybe a single medium sized pack that can split the difference?

I’ve done both

It depends on the nature of the trip

If I were climbing a significant mountain that required an overnight camp before summit day I would (have used) use the pack I packed in. My overnight pack is only about a Kilo so that is reasonable for a day excursion. A fair sized backpack can also be used to put your feet in if you have an unexpected night out.

We do the hike-setup-hike scenario nearly every trip, lately, since the sites in RMNP are reserved and there are so many cool alpine lakes, so I have bought packs that were meant to compress a lot when not carrying the whole kit.

For about 15 years, I used a Golite Jam pack which has clips at the bottom and long compression straps to shrink the pack. Now, I carry a SD Flex Capacitor which compresses horizontally down to 25L.

I have a little daypack that is designed to flip inside out to be a stuff sack inside a larger pack, but haven't used it like that.

I was eyeing those Flex Capacitors back when they were available on Drop. Sadly, Drop seems to have, well, dropped almost all of their outdoor related offerings, but I digress. How do you like that pack?

This, like all of one's gear choices, depends on making tradeoffs among a matrix of factors. I recently bought a 20L UL day pack made by Sea-to-Summit to address this question for my own hikes away from a base camp. It is called Ultra-Sil Day Pack and weighs 2.5 oz. It works for me because my day hike loads don't weigh very much.

Those are some nice packs you all are using. Mine is a bit heavier at 9 oz but the REI Flash 18 waist strap works as a hip belt on my long torso which is amazing so all the weight rides on my hips, not the shoulders. Water is heavy enough to make this a precious thing. I hate weight on the shoulders all day even with a lighter day pack.

4Evrplan, I've only had the chance to take it on one trip, so far. I got the 25-45L version on a SD flash sale for about $80. With a BV450 jammed into the top, it was barely able to close, but I liked how it carried the weight while full and when compressed down to daypack size. The frame on this smaller version is overbuilt for the pack size, but I was glad to have it when full. When it's compressed, it carries kind of like a running vest, with all the reachable pockets.

The old Golite Jam was like carrying a sleepy child back to the hotel all the way from the deepest part of Disneyland at closing time.

Thanks all, that is kind of what I figured, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing options.

I have been kind of curious about packs like DustinV talks about, maybe I will look into them more.

I do a lot of my backpacking in the southwest on trips with little or no water along the way. When starting a trip with 25+ pounds of water, saving a couple pounds on gear never seemed that important, so being very light has not been a priority.

I just the pack that I took to basecamp. I've found that I barely notice it's there because the hip belt is meant to carry so much more weight. I also disconnect the brain and leave it behind.

I've had a couple more trips with the SD Flex Capacitor 25-40L.
Since the BV450 didn't fit in it very well, I grabbed a Contender bear can which fits inside much better. Also, I can confirm the pack does very well with water carry weight. More to the point of the thread though, it makes an excellent daypack when compressed.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that with this smaller capacity model, 40L is really the maximum for this pack. It doesn't have a draft collar, so you actually need to dial in the volume of your gear more than the weight. I chose this capacity because 25L is small enough to be a daypack.