Gear Review: REI Double Diamond Ski Pack

This is almost a great little ski pack. At 2000 cubic inches, it is biggest enough to take out on most daytours. I was able to carry food, avy equipment, a fleece, hat/gloves, water, skins and a basic first aid kit. With all of those, the pack is completly full. Personally, I prefer to have some extra space in case I need to bring extra clothing or water along. If you haven't noticed it from my other posts, I like to be prepared for any situation that might arise. So when I get another daypack, I plan on getting something slightly larger.
The pack fits great and is very comfortable to wear, both while skiing up and down the mountain. It has an external shovel blade pocket and attachments to hold your shovel handle and/or an ice axe. My favorite feature was the back panel zipper. It was so convenient that I almost never loaded the pack from the top. The pack also comes with a 2 L Nalgene Hydration pack that is integrated into the right shoulder strap.
As good as the pack was, there were several quality issues that were highly disappointing. First, the hose on the Nalgene pack has a fitting which disconnects (by pressing a button) from the bladder. When the pack was full, the hose would disconnect from the bladder about 25% of the time. As you would expect, I found this extremely annoying when to get a drink, I had to stop skiing, take off the pack, open it up and reconnect the hose to the bladder. Next, 2 weeks ago, the connection between the bladder and the hose started leaking and I lost all of my water at the very beginning of a ski tour. REI ended up replacing the Nalgene hydration pack with a Camelback bladder that seems to be better built. (So far, no leakage!) Finally, at the beginning of my tour this past Sunday, one of the connectors for my chest strap ripped off the pack. If you've ever seen me, you know its not because I was overflexing my pythons!

Overall, I can not recommend this pack. For day tours where you are not taking a lot of gear with you, it is a great pack. However, I expected more from REI in terms of quality. You do not want a pack that is going to fall apart on you in the backcountry.

Note: I just returned the pack to REI. True to their reputation, there customer service was excellent and they gave me a full refund when I couldn't find another pack in the store to replace it with. They even let me keep the Camelback hydration bladder/hose.