New for 2016 - the Shinumo pack is our version of the Heaps pack re-engineered for women, especially smaller women. Shrink It and Pink It! - uh, no thanks. All the adjustments to the Heaps pack for 2016 apply to the Shinumo too. Quick summary: lighter, bigger pockets, bigger lid, belt loops on the hipbelt, reinforced bottom edge of hipbelt, gobbling rings on the shoulder straps.

So let's talk about making it fit women.

The Heaps is a tall pack, so the first step was to reduce the height of the pack by 2". To make up for the lost volume, I made the pack wider and deeper... in fact, I went ahead and added a bit more volume. The new shape is slightly higher in volume than the Heaps, and also easier to pack, as the current and 2016 Heaps packs have a narrow waist that makes packing somewhat difficult. (My intention is to make these adjustments to the Heaps for the next production run, for Fall 2016).

The suspension has been re-engineered to fit the narrower, shorter and curvier bodies of women. The pack is 2" (50mm) shorter, and the shoulder straps are 2" closer to the hipbelt. The hipbelt is shorter, but also recut for curvier hips, so a tighter curve. The new hipbelt will fit more women, but the hipbelts are also easily interchangeable. Some women will prefer the men's hipbelt, some will want something other than the two sizes offered. My plan for 2016 is to make other sizes of hipbelts "on demand", which will allow me to collect information on what hipbelts are needed.

The shoulder straps for all Imlay packs have been re-shaped for 2016, to fit women better. The goal was to change the regular packs from "Men's" to "Unisex". Mostly this means they are narrower than our previous straps, with the bottom part curved to track away from the breasts. On the women's packs, the shoulder straps are shorter and placed a bit closer together than on the standard "unisex" packs.

"Pink It" - while I did make a few pink packs in the proto process, not many of the burly canyon women I hang with thought making the pack overtly "femmy" was a good idea. Thank you. Besides, my purchasing power does not allow a separate color of fabric for the small run of women's packs. But I did want to differentiate them, so I blocked them out using the two colors of Cordura already in the palette. The two colorways of the Shinumo will be: Envious Green with Great Pumpkin Orange trim; and GP Orange with E Green trim. (The color blocking is not exactly as shown.)

Fitting notes:

While the new Shenanigans (fem Kolob) is the same height as the Shinumo, the shoulder straps on the Shenanigans are placed 1-1/2" lower. Thus the Shenanigans will fit smaller women than the Shinumo will fit.
I do not give "fit dimensions" for my packs because I don't think giving a height, or even a "back height" correlates all that well with who will end up fitting the packs well - there are just too many other variables that have significant impact on how packs fit.
The Shenanigans is the same size as the Kolob. Perhaps it does not need saying, but, the Shenanigans PACK is not a good choice to take through the Shenanigans CANYON.

Now available to order at CanyoneeringUSA. First shipment due to arrive in Mt Carmel January 29th.

2016 Imlay Shinumo pack for canyoneering

Canyoneering USA