User Review: Dana Design Terraplane Overkill

Reviewed January 28, 1998 by Champe Burnley

Rating: rated 5 of 5 stars
Design: Internal
Size: 5800
Number of Pockets: 3
Max. Load Carried: too much
Height of Owner: 5'10"
Price Paid: Way too much

I've owned a Terraplane Overkill for almost five years now. In that time we've spent somewhere in the neighborhood of eight months side by side. After all the hairy adventures we've been through together, I affectionately refer to the big, black Terraplane as my pet gorilla.

Without a doubt, the Terraplane is a magnificent piece of gear. It is incredibly comfortable, very well made and for extended trips where you really do need to carry too, too, much stuff, it's a fantastic backpack.

Some of its high points:

Comfort: I'm always amazed how I can walk day after day and this pack doesn't wear me down. Sometimes I even take it for granted.

While hiking this past summer, a buddy, wearing an old North Face rucksack, would start pulling on his shoulder straps and hunching over like the Hunchback of Notre Dame after an half hour of walking. Hiking together for over a month, I made the mistake of letting him wear my Terraplane one afternoon to see if he noticed a difference in how my Terraplane felt. He did.

By the evening, I began to think I would never get my Terraplane back. Even though he was carrying 10 pounds less than I, his old pack felt like some kind of orthopedic torture device. i was happy to have my gorilla back, ten extra pounds and all.

Bombproof: The pack is very well made, almost to a fault. I initially decided to buy the Overkill because of the pack's side zippers - unlike the normal Terraplane, the Overkill has side zips which allow entry into the main compartment. Ironically, in five years I've used them less than a dozen times. I normally line the pack with a trash bag to keep it waterproof so all the extra cash for the zippers was wasted. Unfortunately the extra zippers also included the added weight of heavier nylon fabric.

At the time, the heavy duty construction seemed like an added bonus. Unfortunately, heavy fabric comes at a price. more weight. It's not as if a standard Terraplane is chintzy in the endurance department - they're bulletproof. This Overkill's heavy fabric is really almost too heavy. What is this stuff, 1,000,000 denier "missleproof" nylon? The folks at Dana are taking the concept of ballistic nylon to a new extreme.

My single biggest complaint with the Terraplane is the darn pack weighs over 7 pounds bone-dry and empty. That's a lot of dead weight.

For some reason, we all seem to think we need heavy duty gear that will withstand a thousand foot fall from the top of a K2. (I've got an over-engineered, very heavy Gore-Tex jacket like this that really bugs me, too.)

In the store heavy duty seems like a smart idea. But when it's time to carry that heavy duty pack full of heavy duty gear up the side of a heavy duty mountain, we suddenly have a heavy duty problem.

Why not buy lighter, well constructed gear and take care of it? (Keep your light weight pack away from the top of K2 and maybe you won't have a problem. Sound reasonable?) Go light, go light - makes for much more pleasant walking.

Now I'll admit if you are climbing K2 or are doing some far out moutaineering for an extended period it might make sense to buy some of this heavy duty stuff. It's amazing though, to see porters in Nepal carrying 90 pound tump-line baskets over their heads wearing only flip flops and a pair of second khakis.

Pack lid converts to fanny pack. Travelling off the trail while on extended hikes, I often convert the pack lid/top into a fanny pack/satchel which I can carry through towns to the market, on the airplane ride etc. Though Dana recommends you pull off the hipbelt and slip it through the bottom of the pack lid, I've found it to be a real pain to do, especially when your packed sleeping bag pushes against the velcro which holds the hip belt tightly in place. Instead, I bought a 2-foot piece of 2.5" nylon webbing and a spare Delrin buckle (just like the hip belt) which I wrap under the lid when attached to the pack. This works much better.

There's an added benefit: according to the folks at Dana, every zipper, opening and strap on the Terraplane has a backup system in case of failure. For example, if the zipper on the bottom compartment blows out, the Terraplane has two straps on the outside of the pack which will secure the compartment. A real plus. Every system is redundant except one; the buckle on the hip belt.

This summer, while on a four month hike in Europe, the one thing that I thought couldn't happen did; my hip belt buckle broke. The one system which didn't have a backup system, of course was the one that caught me unprepared - who said Murphy wasn't a hiker. Unfortunately, I had outfitted my lid/strap combination with a metric buckle which was a half inch narrower than the hipstrap webbing. Though it doesn't sound like a big deal, losing the ability to adjust your hip belt length day after day really is a big deal. Trust me. Trying to find a 2.5" Delrin buckle in small French villages ain't trivial either. "Two and one half inch Delrin hip strap buckle" isn't in many English-French dictionaries, much less the local boulangerie.

The moral: buy an extra buckle, two feet of 2 1/2" webbing, a couple of sliders and strap them under the hip lid just in case you, too, meet Mr. Murphy on the trail. And sooner or later you will.

Color- Black looks neat, but it heats up in the sun. That block of cheese can get pretty rank pretty quickly under a hot summer sun.

Wet Rib - Dana offers a small map / compass / camera / ditty pouch and canteen holder combination called a Wet Rib whicht attaches to the shoulder strap. A Wet Rib is a must.

So often, people don't want to take the trouble to stop, take off their pack get their water bottle out and drink. If you've every walked day after day, it's amazing how your energy sags if you aren't constantly fueling your furnace with food and water. With the Wet Rib, your soda / nalgene/ water bottle is always handy. With a bottle handy, we drink much more. We hike more miles and we enjoy ourselves. If you can afford a Terraplane, you won't even notice the extra cash for a Wet Rib.

I have the small Wet Rib and I do wish that Dana offered a larger, medium sized wet rib with a pocket large enough for maps/ trailguides. etc. A friend told me that he bought a large Rib and it got in the way.

Travel Pockets - An accessory which really impressed me when I first bought the "beast" back in '93 was the Dana Travel Pocket. Taking an extended trip flying and hiking all over the place, I wanted something to keep my pack in for times on as well as off the trail.

The travel pocket is a form fitting duffle bag which converts to a rain cover and can be folded into itself and strapped onto the pack like an accessory pocket when not in use. When doing the flying /hosteling/ trekking thing this works really well. The duffle keeps your pack clean and it protects the contents from nosey flight handlers famous for examing/ borrowing backpack contents. It also saves those many Dana straps from airport conveyors which are famous for eating them. On extended trips, you can leave the duffle back at a refuge, hotel or hostel and secure extra travel guides, street clothes and all those other heavy things until returning from the trail. It actually makes a decent rain cover, but it is heavy. For strictly trail use, why not use a nice trash bag in the pack instead.

Lots of straps. Adjusting the pack properly really is an involved process. Dana even recommends a certain order for pulling and tugging on all the straps to properly adjust things. Once you've done it a few times it's no big deal but you really need to read the manual to do it properly.

Along these lines, find a reputable dealer to fit you. No, I don't work for a retailer, but a shop I deal with allowed me to sit in on a Dana clinic for their sales reps. Dana teaches its retailers on how to size you and adjust each pack to the individual. Trying to save a few bucks (and it'll only be a few - no one seems to discount these puppies) isn't worth it. Be sure, though, to ask the rep if they've been through the Dana clinic. If the sales rep knows what they're doing, they will size you properly, bend the internal aluminum stays to fit your spine and adjust the pack to you like a tailor fitting a suit. Improperly adjusted, a Terraplane feels as uncomfortable as most other packs do on a good day. Adjusted properly, the comfort of this pack will blow your mind.

Cash: Terraplane Overkills are EXPENSIVE. For weeks, I kept asking myself if I had really spent almost $500 on a backpack. I was beginning to question my own sanity. For that much money, shouldn't the pack come with a Sherpa to carry it? Yes, it was expensive, no, it's not perfect. And yes, I'd spend $500 again. Sorry!

Bottomline: Cut out all that extraneous gear, pack light and you'll be much happier with a smaller pack that weighs 25 pounds fully loaded . If you absolutely, positively can't get by without a gorilla on your back, get a Terraplane. It's the best.

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