Light packs?

I am a light packer, its one of my necessities for camping and hiking. Right now I am looking into buying a new light pack, specifically the Go-lite Jam2. I haven't heard of many other cost effective lite packs and I was wondering if you guys have any good suggestions.

ps- I am constantly broke so my budget is below $150, the lower the better.

Thnx!

The best suggestion I can give you is to make sure it fights correctly and is comfortable. Trust me that is worth a little extra weight.

GoLite is having a sale right now. You can get 40% off your cart... I'm too lazy and tired right now to look it up, but go to hammockforums.net and search GoLite sale. Someone posted the coupon codes earlier today... I already bought a topquilt!

You can also experiment with making your own light pack.

Take a lare stuff sack or make one that suits your needs and stitch on the shoulder straps and waist belt. Or have the heavier work of this done by a professional seamstress.

Golite used to have a pack called the Gust, which was nothing more than a 3000 cu. in. stuff sack with shoulder straps and a waist belt. I had one and all you did for making it more comfortable was take a sleeping pad and let it unroll inside and then put your gear inside that.

I think the Gust was slightly more volume, it was the Breeze that was comparable. The Jam is an excellent pack. Laying the pad flat in the pack against your back helps to keep you back area padded. Other light packs with a bit more frame are the Granite Gear "Ultralight" packs. With their "Virga" pack, the suggest the same method used by Gary Palmer above for carrying your sleeping pad. ULA-Equipment makes larger volume frameless packs. A very comfortable pack is the Zpack weighing only ounces, but nice features are add-ons that raise the price considerably.

Here is another one from Gossamer Gear:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jny0EzbaBCQ&feature=channel

Gossamer Gear, ULA, MLD, Six Moon Designs

Rambler is right on with the Granite Gear line of light packs and REI has a couple of house brand lightweight packs. Gregory makes several lightweight Z packs.

Any UL backpacking site like The Lightweight Backpacker,White Blaze or Backpacking Lightweight will have a lot of forum posts on lightweight packs and BPL has gear reviews although most of the content is subscriber only.

I recently purchased the REI Flash. It's light, comes in two sizes, and is designed and built well. Highly recommended.

thanks for the input fellas, but the whole thought process caved when I saw an '08 closeout Golite Quest for 50% off. I was so excited, I ordered it within 1 hour of finding it. my budget was under $110(I hardly buy anything not on sale/new) so this exceeded my criteria. it came to $105 total and it was only in crimson. Not my favorite color in the world but if its half off I'll take puke green!

For what its worth I had researched some of your suggestions, but none of them were 50% off! :)

Hay that sound like a good deal good for you. I only find things on sale like that when I'm broke or when I bought it at full price a week before.