Gossamer Gear Hip Belt Pockets: Field Test
Gossamer Gear came out with some hip belt pockets this year that will fit any pack they’ve every made, including the Mariposa Plus, which is one of my working packs for mutli-day trips.
The pockets themselves are very functional. The zippers work reliably and the pockets hold a lot of gear, even in the medium size shown above. However, I’ve had real problems with the pockets on my last couple of trips because they’re always sliding down the hip belt and falling off whenever I unbuckle my pack. That’s bad for my camera, which I like to keep close at hand in my left pocket.
Each pocket has a small velcro tab that is supposed to attach to the Gossamer Gear hip belt, at the point where its foam padding is inserted. There’s some velcro on the inside of the hip belt that the pocket is supposed to anchor to, but they don’t stay connected to each other for very long. Gossamer Gear provides little white loops so that you can tie the pocket to your pack (I guess with very fine spectra), but that’s obviously not a workable solution.
Instead, I use safety pins, shown above, to attach the pockets to the belt. It ain’t pretty but it works.
Related posts:
I had the same problem. I notched out a section of the pad(s) to accommodate the velcro tab. It works beautifully.