{"id":201960,"date":"2026-05-14T13:39:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T20:39:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/?p=201960"},"modified":"2026-05-14T14:04:48","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T21:04:48","slug":"my-red-rei-pack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/hike\/my-red-rei-pack","title":{"rendered":"My REI Backpack, My Loyal Friend"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Some gear just can\u2019t be replaced. 

Maybe it\u2019s a tent<\/a> that\u2019s become a home away from home, a hiking staff<\/a> you carried across one of Iceland\u2019s most challenging mountain passes or a perfectly broken-in bike saddle<\/a>. Most outdoor sentimentalists have at least one item that we just can\u2019t part with\u2014even long after it stops performing on the road, trail or campsite. 

That\u2019s one reason REI Co-op designers make durable, dependable gear: We want it to last as long as the memories do.  

For REI Co-op Member Alison C. in California, it\u2019s her 40-liter red REI Co-op Lookout hiking backpack, which she describes as her loyal friend. \u201cPerhaps I have had it for 20 or 25 years,\u201d she wrote in an email, telling her pack\u2019s story. \u201cI sadly must now retire it, as the side pockets are breaking through, and I have a hole in the bottom, both had to be patched with duct tape while on my last adventure.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A close-up shot of Alison’s much-loved REI Co-op Lookout pack.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n


Her message made its way to the team behind REI Co-op product development, and caught the eye of senior innovation prototyper Adam Kurth. While others might just see a beat-up old backpack in the photos Alison C. sent in, Kurth saw a time capsule, and decided to try and give this old backpack a few more trips down the trail.  

Read on for more about where Alison\u2019s pack has taken her, how the REI team helped bring her bag back to life and to learn how you can do the same for your beloved gear. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The 40-liter REI Co-op Lookout as advertised in the 2007 summer catalog. Image courtesy of the REI Co-op Living Archive.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve seen much more value in recycling things where we can, and keeping a hold of things. I\u2019ve realized I have a tendency to do that. Going back through my photos, I have a hat that shows up in pictures going back 20 years. I never would have guessed in a million years that I\u2019ve had it that long! That\u2019s what happened to me with this backpack.

I\u2019ve always been an outdoor girl. I grew up in central California, and Yosemite was in our backyard, so to speak. My dad started taking my younger sister and me on backpacking trips when I was young. I fell in love with being outdoors and discovered that it was much more than just going on a hike. It was somehow therapeutic for me and filled me with joy. That was probably my first outdoor kind of love, and the relationship that I began with the outdoors began with my dad. So, it was super meaningful to go back to Yosemite after my dad passed away in 2016. Of course, I brought my red pack. My cousin and significant other joined me on a backpacking trip that I had taken with my dad when I was a teen. The three of us hiked to a high point on that trail and scattered his ashes from there.

This pack has gone with me through many different life moments over the last two decades. It\u2019s been to Yosemite many times, and the Narrows in Zion National Park with my daughter Grace. It\u2019s gone to Estes Park in Colorado, Santa Fe and Taos in New Mexico. It’s been on all sorts of local hikes in the San Diego area while I was training for the Camino de Santiago<\/a>, including Torrey Pines and El Cajon Mountain. I went back to school in my 40s, over 15 years ago, and became a nurse. So, I had a lot of back and forth to school with my books in this pack. And when my daughters were in middle and high school, I hauled a bunch of stuff in it onto the soccer and track fields as well as various other places to participate in their events.

It was on a hiking trip that I found my daughter\u2019s doll\u2019s shoes in one of the side pouches, from when she was maybe 5 or 6 years old. I must have put them in there for her for safe keeping, and they were still there close to 20 years later! That connection to my daughter was just so strong the moment I found them.

So, this backpack has gone with me through life\u2019s journey. During some of the most wonderful, memorable, momentous occasions and some of the saddest too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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REI Co-op Member Alison C. hiking the Camino de Santiago with her trusty REI Co-op Lookout pack. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Before walking the Camino de Santiago last year, I had experienced multiple deep, personal losses in about a year and a half timeframe. Walking the Camino was a chance to put all of that to the side and do something truly for me, to reflect and heal and try to figure out what was going to be in this next chapter. The doors closed to so many areas of my life, but then new doors became available to me. Hiking the Camino wasn\u2019t something I\u2019d planned for years and years. But after all these things happened, I just decided, \u201cI\u2019m going to do this.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started with a guide and a group of first-time pilgrims, and we did the first section together, from the starting town in France, Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, to Pamplona. Once we got to Pamplona our guide said, \u201cGoodbye!\u201d We were like little hatchlings, moving together as we built our confidence. And then we started to separate. I spent some time walking with just a few of the people, and eventually I was on my own too; it was just me and my thoughts. But it wasn\u2019t the super solitary experience that I had expected for myself. You meet people along the way, in the towns and fellow pilgrims. Through the conversations I had with the people I encountered and the moments I had alone in nature, I found healing and a new sense of purpose.

It was after this Camino Frances trip, the biggest trip of my life, that I really started reflecting on this red pack and how long I\u2019ve had it, and how it took me through this entire trip, even though it literally started falling apart. I had to put duct tape on the sides, and the bottom started to fall out. Various pilgrims offered their duct tape to me along the way!

My experience on the Camino was just amazing. I really loved that trip. The fact that my red pack was with me made it extra perfect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 Alison C., REI Co-op Member since 1987<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cRepairs are badges of honor in my opinion. They bring \u202fyou into the club of people who truly use their gear and apparel and don\u2019t give up when you hit a snag.\u201d \u2013 REI Co-op senior innovation prototyper Adam Kurth<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Adam Kurth, senior innovation prototyper, set out to repair as much of Alison\u2019s pack as possible. Here\u2019s what he says about the experience. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people retire a pack much sooner than this. I\u2019m proud of Alison for keeping this thing going. It was being held together by duct tape and dirt mostly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little mushy-ness from me: I love the story a pack tells, it\u2019s different than a garment that is seasonal like a jacket or shorts. It\u2019s an item that gets used through the year, and year after year. In Alison\u2019s pack, I found fine dirt similar to what covers my car and camping gear when I\u2019m living the way I know I should. I found sand, dark sand. I found little bits of paper like the pockets of your jeans collect. I found the waterproof coating on the very inside of the pack had gotten hot, perhaps left in the car on summer days. I could tell the pack had gotten wet, because it had stiffened and softened. There are sweat\u202fstains, pen marks, the corners of the fabric grinning from lifting too heavy of loads. It was a pleasure to discover all the hints of adventure as I deconstructed panels, picked stitches and reworked what I could. I intentionally left as much of the exterior as found and reinforced it from the inside, actually and metaphorically adding my support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The pack disassembled and ready for repair. Photo credit: Adam Kurth<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since the panels were pulling away and shredding at the seams, I had to seam rip the internal binding off to access the edges of the panel. I used some scrap fabric bonded to a TPU membrane, essentially like making my own Tenacious Tape<\/a> (that is heat activated). If you don\u2019t have TPU, you can simply sew the backing panel on to the existing, failing panel. This gives it support as an extra layer; you can be as detailed as you like and really make it look clean ,or you can go quick and simple with lots of zig-zag and random stitch lines to hold the panels together. Remember, the stakes are low: There is already a hole, you can\u2019t make it much worse and this might be an opportunity to use some bright orange thread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Photo credit: Adam Kurth<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I went through the process of removing the worn and torn stretch pockets on the sides to pattern new ones and set them in properly. A large hand needle or sewing awl<\/a> would allow you to top on a new panel from the outside if opening up the pack is too much fuss for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Alison’s pack before repairs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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And after\u2014no more duct tape<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Do you have a piece of gear you can’t part with?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Tell us about it\u2014and where it’s taken you\u2014in the comments. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Alison took her refurbished bag right back out on the trail, to a hike at the Santa Rosa Plateau in Murrieta, Calif. <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some gear just can\u2019t be replaced.  Maybe it\u2019s a tent that\u2019s become a home away from home, a hiking staff you carried across one of Iceland\u2019s most challenging mountain passes or a perfectly broken-in bike saddle. Most outdoor sentimentalists have at least one item that we just can\u2019t part with\u2014even long after it stops performing on the road, trail or campsite.  That\u2019s one reason REI Co-op designers make durable, dependable gear: We want it to last as long as the memories do.   For REI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30740,"featured_media":201970,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[387,388],"tags":[1718,2005,421,109,917],"internal-tag":[],"class_list":["post-201960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hike","category-travel","tag-camino-de-santiago","tag-gear-i-hold-dear","tag-rei-co-op","tag-member-stories","tag-repair"],"parsely":{"version":"1.1.0","canonical_url":"https:\/\/rei.com\/blog\/hike\/my-red-rei-pack","smart_links":{"inbound":0,"outbound":0},"traffic_boost_suggestions_count":0,"meta":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","headline":"My REI Backpack, My Loyal Friend","url":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/hike\/my-red-rei-pack","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/hike\/my-red-rei-pack"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/01\/IMG_1136_HERO.jpg?resize=150%2C150","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https:\/\/www.rei.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/01\/IMG_1136_HERO.jpg?fit=2000%2C2001"},"articleSection":"Hike","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Ever Meister"}],"creator":["Ever Meister"],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Uncommon Path \u2013 An REI Co-op Publication","logo":""},"keywords":["camino de santiago","gear i hold dear","rei co-op","rei co-op member stories","repair"],"dateCreated":"2026-05-14T20:39:34Z","datePublished":"2026-05-14T20:39:34Z","dateModified":"2026-05-14T21:04:48Z"},"rendered":"