Carrying a Nalgene Bottle

[SPAC3MAN]

Mystery Ranch has a nice 1L accessory, check it out!

[Dogwood]

Kind of an old thread but I'll bite. Have you considered carrying a water bottle on your backpack's shoulder harness. It frees up volume in the side packets or interior of you pack or in some cases the rear shovel pocket, makes the water easily accessible on the go, keeps you from reaching around to the side pocket or looking away from where you are going while still letting you drink on the run, could possibly better balance the load, and it's easy to do as a DIY project. Some backpacks, like the ULA CDT, which is my 3 season go to long distance backpack, already come with this feature. All it is a couple of sections of bungee lopped behind the facer webbing on the front of the shoulder straps that hold various shaped/designed water bottles. I'll use a separate 2.4 L Platypus or Evernew bladder for larger water hauls.

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

Kind of an old thread but I'll bite. Have you considered carrying a water bottle on your backpack's shoulder harness...

Some backpacks, like the ULA CDT, which is my 3 season go to long distance backpack, already come with this feature...

I'll have to give that a shot - I've always removed the water bottle holders on my ULA packs, (Or ordered them without when that was an option) but I could see how freeing up a side pocket might be nice.

[Dogwood]

Doing that allowed me to downsize to a backpack with less volume(and hopefully lower wt). Yeeaah. That wt saved on a lower volume backpack can often be traded off by adding that wt back in somewhere else too like carrying a bit more food, extra pr of socks, etc.

[Aaron Zagrodnick]

Makes sense. I really like the looks of the CDT...Part of me wishes ULA had an even smaller pack in their lineup with the same design for day hikes.