Who Makes The Best Hydration Pack For Hiking?

Needless to say, when talking about the “best” of anything, everyone has their own opinion and so there is no real right or wrong answer. Further, with so many hydration packs on the market today, being produced and distributed, under hundreds of different names and supplied by hundreds of different manufacturers; obviously no one has really tried them all. Who knows – perhaps the perfect hydration pack is being created by a small specialty shop in Switzerland or by a no-name factory somewhere deep in China. However, realistically, when it comes to finding high quality hydration packs, there are some well established names: Camelbak, Hydrapak, NorthFace and others. This is probably where one will find the most likely contenders for the “best” hydration packs on the market today.

So what pack do I arbitrarily suggest is the best for hiking? My preference actually goes to the Osprey Raptor 10. Osprey (www.ospreypacks.com) is a fairly small company and also a newcomer to the hydration pack market though they have been well established for making excellent backpacks and other hiking gear for years now. Employing their established expertise at backpacking technology along with a novel idea of how a hydration pack should work, the Osprey Hydraulics division now offers two series of hydration packs: the Raptor and the Manta. Both packs have their own unique features and come in a range of sizes.

The real key to the success of the Osprey packs is the HydraLock system that they utilize in both types of hydration pack. This is an integrated internal frame system that works in conjunction with their specially designed HydraForm reservoir in order to apply constant pressure to the reservoir. This makes it easier to drink from, but more importantly for hikers, it helps to stabilize the water load. This has always been one of my biggest pet peeves about other hydration packs – whether designed for hiking or not – they are rarely very stable and all the sloshing back and forth can become really annoying after a while. Of course the Osprey system does not completely eliminate the sloshing, but it is a vast improvement over any other hydration pack that I have ever used, even those made by the bigger companies.

Interestingly, it seems that Camelbak is planning to adopt some of the features of the HydraLock system in their new Antidote reservoirs, but these will not even be on the market until 2011. Further, having already purchased an Osprey, I intend to get my money’s worth out of it. This is the biggest complaint about Osprey packs, they are not cheap and will cost noticeably more than similar sized packs even from other top manufacturers. However, it was still a good investment in my opinion.

With respect to my particular preference for the Raptor 10 as opposed to any of the other Raptor or Manta packs, that just has to do with the gear that I carry with me. That is, the Raptor 10 provides the perfect amount of space for my needs. Needless to say, everyone has their own preferences when it comes to size and space requirements, but if you are looking for an excellent hydration pack for hiking, you should certainly take a look at Osprey.