Gear Review

PodSacs Black Ice

gloriously minimalist design
relatively light weight
huge useable volume range
questionable load carrying capacity

For your reviewing pleasure, We've flown in an exotic beauty from across the Pond: the Pod Sacs Black Ice. Hand-made in the U.K. by Peter O'Donavan, PodSacs are minimalist climbing packs designed for the hardcore mountaineer.

The Black Ice is listed as 50 liters plus 12, giving it an impressively large capacity. Despite its volume, the Black Ice is acceptably light, weighing 3 pounds, 11.5 ounces on my scale. That number can be brought down considerably by stripping the pack down; the lid, frame, and waist belt are all removable.

Out of the box, the first thing you'll notice about the Black Ice is its gloriously clean, minimalist design. Tired of superfluous straps, zippers, clips, bells, whistles, funky tool-holders and the like? The Black Ice has none of it. The closest thing to excess in the entire design is an interior hydration pouch that you could cut out to make things perfect.

You'll also notice the excellent build quality. This is a handmade pack, after all, a true rarity these days where everything else is built in third-world factories. Cordura and Dynema-reinforced fabrics allow the Black Ice to weather all the usual mountain abuses—jagged rocks, thorn bushes, ski edges—without suffering undue damage.

The lid is removable, of course, and has two zippered pockets: one accessible topside, the other when the lid is flipped open. The pack also features side wand pockets, and aggressive compression straps which will cinch the volume down below 30 liters for climbing/summit assaults. The Black Ice ships with a very clever second waist belt, which replaces the padded belt in the pack's stripped configuration.

Going in the opposite direction, the pack has a truly huge expansion collar—a full twelve inches. Given the cut's generous girth, the Black Ice will expand and expand and swallow up everything you could conceivably put inside it. I'm guessing the stated 62 liter total capacity understates the actual volume by close to ten more liters, giving the Sac an incredible range of usable volumes.

The Pod Sacs' minimalist ethic extends to the backpanel, waist belt and shoulder straps. There are no ventilation channels on the backpanel. In general, the Black Ice has very little padding, which will likely provoke some degree of bruising as the load grows heavier. As you'd expect for such a light design, load-carrying comfort is where you'll have to make the biggest compromises.

The Black Ice features a "flexible" metal stay, plus a plastic framesheet and an extra-tiny foam pad (too small to be of any practical value as a bivy pad). The flexibility of the stay allows you to customize the contour of the pack to match your body shape.

Unfortunately, it allows the load to shift inexorably toward your shoulders. On its own, the Black Ice has very little shape to it. While empty, the Pod Sac has a disturbing tendency to resemble a duffle bag with straps attached. Fill it up and cinch it down, and the pack shapes up nicely, gaining support from the rigidity of the compressed contents (similar, for example, to the frameless Wild Things Andinista pack).

That won't make you happy, however, if you need to repeatedly pull items out of the pack while climbing, or if you're only carrying a half load of gear. Ultimately, the Black Ice cannot compete in load carrying comfort with packs that feature more substantial frames. It didn't take long walking around with a heavy load for me to decide I wouldn't be comfortable using the Black Ice as my primary overnight sack.

It's also worth noting that the Black Ice weights exactly the same as the Black Diamond Shadow 45, a pack with a better suspension and a far richer feature set, which would seem to undermine the supposed advantages of minimalism.

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