Climber Insights on Bouldering Backpacks

Hey everyone! I'm a design university student working on a project, and I'd love to get feedback from the climbing community.

I’ve been researching bouldering backpacks and noticed a few issues that might be worth addressing—mainly that chalk gets everywhere and is hard to clean out, climbing shoes can stink up the bag due to lack of ventilation, and some climbers feel grossed out having their food in the same section as their shoes. Most climbing-specific backpacks also tend to have a big open compartment where everything is just thrown in.

When I brought up the idea of designing a more structured, easy-to-clean backpack with better ventilation and organization, my peers told me they didn’t think it was necessary and that there wasn’t much use for a specialized backpack like this.

So I wanted to ask: Do you see this as a real problem worth solving, or do you think a dedicated bouldering backpack isn’t needed? I’d also love to know if there are any other issues you face with your climbing bag or things you wish bouldering backpacks included.

I’d really appreciate any insights to help shape my project. Thanks in advance!

I like the idea and thought of problem-solving, but honestly I don’t think it’s needed. Put your chalk bag in a big ziploc or something. Put dryer sheets in your shoes to absorb moisture then take your shoes out of the bag when you get back home to air out. I carry my food in a small lunchbox I already own that fits in the bag. Simple things I do to battle those issues and they largely offset them.

I feel like a lot of other areas in our lives have fallen victim to the “hyper specialized equipment for every aspect of your life” (oh I need another plastic kitchen gadget specifically designed to shred chicken or mash up ground beef) when what we have is often (always?) more than enough with enough ingenuity. It’s just more and more needless consumption when we’re already drowning in piles of shit. Climbing gear (besides specialized protection and whatnot, things that truly have a specific purpose) doesn’t need to go that way. I have bag, it carry things. Anyway, I digress.

Half the time I just shove a pair of shoes and my chalk in-between pads and call it good. When I need to carry more stuff for the day like food and layers, one of the few backpacks I own already works perfectly fine for that.

Don't design a backpack - design a front pack instead.

When carrying a big stack of pads on their back, boulderers will often carry the bag with their gear on the front to balance out the weight. This is just a backpack turned around and worn the other way. But I've never seen a purpose-built front pack for bouldering. It's a gap in the market.  If someone built a good front pack I'd buy it.

I think the main thing you would want for a bouldering specific pack is that it be low profile (in thickness). If you put it inside the pad, a thick backpack creates a unwieldy bulge that also makes the pad feel extra heavy due to the increased distance away from your body. If you want to carry on the front of your body, it is important that you can still see your feet and rock in front of you when you need to scramble, also necessitating a lower profile than most backpacks.

Concerns about chalk spillage and shoe ventilation are pretty low on my list of worries.

Arc'teryx and BD already have these products on market so you can tell your friends, they're wrong. With this in mind, it's already been done, how would yours be notably different? 

It's not a pointless idea and quite frankly just look at where marketing got trump, the white house. You can sell anything to anyone with the right framing and marketing. 

I must say I love having one big compartment. Specialized pockets end up going unused or misused and everything inside gets lumpy and hard to find- I hate 'em. This thread should include the caveat that a boulderer can always just toss their stuff loose into the pad and use that as a pack in the worst case scenario. I've never had a chalk issue, and shoes can always go outside the pack. To answer; no, we don't need more specialized stuff, but...

Two good things were mentioned above- low profile to sandwich inside a pad or to design a better front pack. My backpack never goes on my back while bouldering. I would only include that it can attach to the way back of the pads, or on top, to have less straps going both directions over your torso- a front pack and a pad ends up feeling like some kinda crappy shibari setup.

All the homies have the organic dual zip.