Burton  AK Dispatch 25L Snow Pack

I took it out on the slopes and used it as my ski backpack and it was slushy snow/rain and it handled amazingly with no water getting in and the water that did get in because of me drained perfectly out the bottom through a special hole. And afterwards when it was time to head back to my car it held my helmet perfectly.

I bought this a while age and have absolutely loved it. Even in the northwest with the snow being super wet it keeps the water out great and the water that does get in drains out the tiny holes in the bottom. I can’t wait to use this for hikes during the summer.

Overall it a very solid pack, I like the split design Only downside is there isn’t a space or outlet for a water bladder

I so much wanted to love this pack. Burton has been my go-to for more than 20 years and I have two earlier generations of this particular pack, one from 2007 (which lost a zipper in 2014) and another from 2014 that I am still using today. Before COVID, I was a 20-25 mile a week hiker year-round and I would go from using my pack on the weekends for fun to using my pack during the week for work. I love Burton because they have always tended to be technically-focused. Packs with great water-resistant fabrics and you could usually find patterns or high-viz colors instead of just ... b l a c k. I've been injured often on the mountains and I want my packs to be high-viz so I can be spotted more easily if something happens. All my previous Burton packs have had amazing external zip pockets. Snowpacks have made fantastic year-round packs, with a top pocket for essentials, a perfect middle one just sized for green trails, compass and emergency kit, two side zippers for water and juice bottles, a cool "underneath everything" middle zippered pocket that could hold hat/gloves, etc., and a huge double-zippered main compartment which fit my MacBook Pro easily PLUS a whole bunch of anything else I wanted to throw in. (there were also internal pockets, elasticized and zipped.) Hip zips for quick snacks and stowing trash. I could hang my crampons on the outside of my pack and not worry about getting things wet. There used to be a slot for a snowboard. The style changed over the years from zipped to open, but since I don't board, I used that slot to carry other stuff -- 6' loppers from the hardware store, for example, because I had a 20 minute walk home. During COVID I had to take my mom to the hospital a lot and was able to work from my pack. Needless to say, I could carry a hotspot, laptop, lunch, juice and water, hand sanitizer and gloves, and still had plenty of room for jacket, book, medications, or anything else I happened to need. And of course the pack was comfortable, so hauling all this stuff wasn't a problem. Fast forward to this new version of the snow pack and I can't for the life of me understand what it is designed for. It is the most uncomfortable pack I've ever tried. Neither the S/M nor the M/L worked and both were too narrow to be useful. This pack feels like you've got a sheet cake pan strapped to your back. In addition, the shoulder straps feel like hard spare tires. Gone is the board slot that opened up and instead there's an inside main compartment (behind the front main compartment) with a rectangular rigid frame that's about an inch or two deep. The front main compartment has sacrificed all of its volume and has been cut narrow at the waist so there's no way to fit a serious laptop in. OTOH it has these weird ice cream cone fabric folds sewn into the sides that flop around but don't do anything except take up space. Was mine sewn incorrectly? I couldn't even get the pack all the way open. Hey! You can reach into the inside main compartment from the outside but ouch -- that sheet cake pan frame really hurts when you try to stick your hand through and the zipper is too darn tight to pull anything out. The weird side zipper access means you also lose part of the zipper that used to be for the front main compartment, which now won't unzip all the way. The elasticized bands on each side that squeeze the pack flat are just annoying as heck. Goodbye usefulness of the top essentials pocket. They've snugged a helmet holder right underneath this pocket which takes all of the volume of the pocket so it no longer holds much. Gone are other external pockets as well, except for the hip pocket. Nothing is "quick" with this pack, either, because it is so tight. When I stop for a break, I like to be able to crack open the top of my pack and just sit and reach in for what I need. This pack needs too much managing, especially with the inside main compartment, for which you need to basically slice open the whole pack to get at. I don't want to do this in the snow and I don't want to do this in the wind, so you can't really put anything in there that you need access to (and you also can't slide it out the side, which is too tight.) Despite this being my favorite brand, I had to send it back and I'll keep looking for my new favorite.