Pa'lante Packs

Pa'lante Packs puts a sentence on its own info page that most gear companies would pay a lawyer to remove: these packs will not last your entire lifetime under heavy use. The pack maker, which started in Utah, says it expects yours to last a full thru hike, and it has tested the packs enough to stand behind that. After that, you and the pack are on your own.

The company started in 2016 with a couple of small batches, about 100 simple packs, sewn in a basement in Utah. The name comes from a founder's time in Panama, where "para adelante" gets shortened to pa'lante, meaning onward. Field Mag found the founders prefer to stay largely anonymous, which is easier when your website runs in lowercase red type with crystals floating behind it.

The idea was a frameless pack with fewer features and storage you can reach while walking. Field Mag credits the brand with spreading details that now show up on dozens of ultralight packs, like a sewn in phone pocket on the shoulder strap and a bottom pocket that takes trash without breaking stride. Field Mag's writer first came across the brand in 2017, on the gear list of a hiker who had just set the Appalachian Trail speed record.

Where the packs get sewn has changed four times. An Arizona factory made them from 2017 until early 2020, and then a small team the founders trained in Ogden took over for about two years. Since 2021 most packs have come from Vietnam and most apparel from China, with some small batches still sewn in Ogden. The company, which is two people, says the Asian factories sit close to the fabric mills it works with and are "much more dialed than domestic operations."

That mill relationship shows up in the pockets. Stretch mesh on ultralight packs has a reputation for tearing on the first sharp rock, so Pa'lante developed a grid mesh woven with UHMWPE, the fiber family that includes Dyneema, with a mill in Korea when other versions stopped being made. A lighter 70 denier version went into production in 2025.

Andrew Bentz designs and prototypes everything in Salt Lake City, while operations run out of Bishop, California, where a small shop attached to the warehouse sits near the Pacific Crest Trail. It opens most Tuesdays and Fridays for two hours. The warranty covers manufacturing defects for two years and leaves out broken buckles, which the company sells as spare parts instead.

For hikers who would rather sew their own, Pa'lante sells the patterns and materials for its original Simple Pack. The founders say kits like it were how they learned to make packs, so the basement method is now for sale to anyone with a large format printer.