Tactical Tailor prepared a press release on their new line of Pacific Northwest Packs, which can be read below:
The PNW Pack Series has been kicking around in Tactical Tailor’s design shop for about 18 months. Obviously Tactical Tailor geeks out over backpacks and we love the great Pacific North West. We love the fit, form and function that a lot of the climbing/alpine packs offered in the mountains, but the problem that consistently surfaced was light weight packs only work well when you put light weight things in them. A pack that works awesome for camping and climbing in the Cascades would fall apart as soon as you added 2 SAW drums, 100 rounds of 7.62 link, a mortar round and a few 5590 batteries.
We would often joke that the US Military got three things right, the smoking jacket, the poncho liner and the ALICE pack. Unfortunately ever since, the US Military has been trying to get rid of them once they saw that they worked and the troops loved them; well, as much as anyone can love a piece of GI equipment…
Tactical Tailor staff travels the US about 30-40 weeks a year doing trade shows and visiting our nation’s war fighters. The two things we hear consistently is that the ALICE/MALICE frame is king and that our supporters wish we would build a new pack since they can’t wear their old one out and need an excuse to buy a new one.
We started thinking about how we could combine our love of the MALICE pack with more updated outdoor design features that we loved and the PNW Pack Series was born.
In 2015, Larry Coffey, the owner of Tactical Tailor and the father of the late Tactical Tailor founder Logan Coffey, mentioned that he would love to have a team in the 2016 Bataan Memorial Death March. As we all learned early in our military careers, a suggestion from the commander is really an order, so we wasted no time in starting our training.
As we were working through the design process we carried these packs up Mount Si, Tiger Mountain, Mount Rainer (aka Mount Tahoma) and along the Nisqually River with military weight loads. We post holed in the snow, trekked through frozen fog and walked in white out conditions. The mountains wasted no time in telling us what we got right and what we got painfully wrong. We’d hit the design table, make some changes and hit the mountains again the next weekend. Some of the great new features that resulted from these experiences are an adjustable suspension system with load lifters, low profile super straps, outward cinching super belts, compression straps and exterior access zips. Plus, if you like the look of these new straps and belts, they will be available for sale separately too.
Tactical Tailor is looking forward to walking our packs in the Bataan memorial Death March on March 20 at White Sands, NM and they will be available for customers to order that same day. It’s been an amazing journey back to our roots rucking our own designs and we look forward to sharing them with everyone that has supported us over the years. We hope to see everyone at White Sands or whatever post, camp or base we land at after that. Of course, if you’re ever at Fort Lewis, come see us, we have a Starbucks machine!
Got questions or need to get your hands on one of these awesome new packs? Look us up on the web at www.tacticaltailor.com, drop us a line at customerservice@tactcialtailor.com or give us a shout 253-984-7854.