Gregory Alpinisto 30 Review | GearJunkie Tested

I pulled myself onto the airy arête in the morning sunshine on one of Colorado’s more obscure ridgeline scrambles. The air was frigid; the rock was cold and brittle after the season’s first snowstorm the night before. A careful hand placement, followed by a delicate toe, as we progressed toward the summit, the mountain plummeting thousands of feet on either side.

It was a semi-technical day in terms of gear loadout, but extra layers were a necessity with so many hours in the exposed alpine, quickly transitioning to winter. I hauled it all in Gregory’s new Alpinisto 30 backpack, an update to a long-lived series of mountaineering backpacks.

The Alpinisto 30 was an excellent match for the day. It’s compact, comfortable, and ergonomic. And after months of calling it in for bigger, more technical objectives that required more gear, like ropes and ice tools, it continued to perform. It even hauled gear on a few early-season backcountry skiing missions — a versatile little pack, to say the least.

Even still, there were a few details in this heavily refined pack that I felt Gregory could refine.

In short: The Gregory Alpinisto 30 backpack ($230) stays true to its core audience with attachment options for all the pointy mountaineering bits and an excellent rope carry. But it also leans toward comfort over pure minimalism, making it viable for hikers, trekkers, and even backcountry skiers. Rather than stripping a design to its essence like most climbing-focused packs, the Alpinisto takes a different tack — offering sensible features without turning it into a kitchen sink monstrosity.

Gregory Alpinisto 30 Review

The Alpinisto on my back is hardly the first. It’s the sixth generation, going back to 1996. The new Alpinisto 30 is accompanied by three other volumes — 20L, 25L, and 50L options.

Three different packs between 20L and 30L, but then a gap until 50L? It seemed a bit strange to me. I went for the 30L as a good middle point between the larger and smaller packs, which share many features across the line.

I stood in the icy trailhead parking lot staring at the pile of gear in the back of my Forester. It was 4 a.m., and I wondered why I hadn’t packed it into the Alpinisto 30 the night before. Fortunately for the ice climbing partner breathing down my neck, this pack absolutely ate the haphazard pile of nylon and steel.

Pockets

The Alpinisto 30 strikes a nice balance of minimalist and featured. Look no further than the pockets on offer. In addition to the main pack body, the Alpinisto 30 integrates three pockets — one standard internal back panel water-bladder sleeve, one side pocket, and one sneakily integrated pocket in the front of the pack.

The latter two are unique for packs like this. The side access pocket is slick. A great place for easy-access essentials — a headlamp, a knife, and lots of snacks fit inside. It’s just big enough for a large sandwich, or really any combination of foods for a day trip.

It also wouldn’t be the worst spot for a compact water bottle. If I had slightly more flexible shoulders, I’d be able to access that pocket while wearing the pack. Some users will have no problem zipping it open and grabbing a snack on the go.

Most importantly, that pocket is easy to access when the Alpinisto 30 is carrying a full ice climbing kit, which is where many packs fall short.

The front pocket is hidden under a flap that connects to the pack’s lid flap via a metal hook. A small, nestled zipper opens to a large compartment that makes for quite versatile storage of several liters. Despite being in the zone where you might find an avalanche tools pocket in a ski touring pack, the zipper and pocket dimensions don’t accommodate an avalanche shovel or probe. It’s so close, though.

Here’s the weird thing. The Alpinisto’s lid is essentially a shroud with no access. There’s a tiny hole underneath that a rope strap can sneak through to hide in. But other than that, it won’t readily store anything. I imagine the designers prefer to keep it empty so it can hug a coiled rope more securely.

But I wouldn’t mind slipping something flat and flexible in there, like a slice of pizza wrapped in tin foil or a map if it had a zippered opening. To be fair, I wasn’t hurting for more pockets or storage without it. The side and front pockets were sufficient.

Carrying Comfort

One category where the Alpinisto blows its alpine competitors out of the water is carrying comfort, à la the back panel. Gregory uses what it calls an AirCushion back panel. It’s essentially a 3D, honeycomb-like structure about half an inch thick. The hollow chambers allow air to move and keep your back relatively cool when you’re hammering uphill.

The whole panel is flexible and soft. It refreshingly formed around the curves of my back instead of pressing up like a 2×4, as lightweight packs full of climbing gear can. That level of comfort is rare for strippable alpine climbing packs like this one. Usually, you get a thin sheet of removable foam and a removable frame, and sometimes you get nothing.

It’s worth noting here that the Alpinisto’s honeycomb back panel is decidedly non-removable. However, an internal back panel sheet that supports the shape and torsional structure can be removed. Without it, you save yourself 152 g of weight.

The shoulder straps are comparatively Spartan. They’re no less comfortable than the back panel, though. Load adjusters helped straighten the load when I had the steel crampons and ropes stowed. It’s a comfy pack, especially the top half.

The Alpinisto is more comfortable than your typical climbing pack, even approaching hiking pack territory. The tradeoff is weight. This backpack is significantly heavier than most ultra-minimalist climbing packs, which are about as complicated as a brown paper bag.

Before stripping anything off, the Alpinisto is 1,080 g at baseline — gasp! That’s about 50% heavier than Black Diamond’s minimalist 536g Blitz 28 pack. Heck, it’s heavier than Blue Ice’s 60L Stache backpack. Most users wouldn’t (and shouldn’t) wince at a few hundred extra grams. But there are light-and-fast diehards whose hackles will be raised.

Hip Belt

That all said, the Alpinisto’s hip belt has been rubbing me the wrong way. I won’t call it poorly designed. However, it caters to a very specific user group, limiting the pack’s versatility for most others. The hip belt at baseline is made of 1.5-inch webbing straps on either side that buckle in the middle. It’s very minimalist but nothing crazy. Small cushioned hip pads float on each side to add a little more cushion than webbing alone.

The hip pads aren’t anchored to the pack or the straps themselves. However, each one does have a small 3.5-inch webbing tab that can weave into the adjuster, anchoring the strap to the pack’s frame so it stays in place.

In theory, I get it. Climbers can remove the pads and the straps entirely. That way, there’s no interference with their harness’s hip belt and all the gear hanging on the gear loops. It was nice to leave them at home entirely for a few pitches of close-to-home ice climbing.

But that feature comes with tradeoffs for the average user or those days that don’t require a harness. For one, the floating pads and webbing belts are just kind of annoying. They twist easily, and the anchor straps are difficult to manipulate with cold or gloved hands. They provide decent support, but not as much as a fixed hip belt that you’d find on a hiking-specific backpack.

But the thing that annoyed me the most about the floating hip belts is that they constantly pulled my shirt and layers up into a bunch underneath. It felt like I was constantly pulling my layers back down after every high-stepping, climbing move, or when I bent over. I don’t usually have this issue with fixed hip belts. Not a dealbreaker for the average user, but it’s definitely a trade-off for improved climbing harness compatibility.

Mountain Tool Attachment

The Alpinisto isn’t just pretending to be an alpine climbing pack. So nobody should be surprised that Gregory prioritized attachment points for technical tools throughout the pack.

The rope attachment is a highlight. Beefy or skinny ropes can drape over the pack body underneath the pack’s lid. The coils can then logically buckle underneath the pack’s side compression straps. That’s a fairly standard setup for packs like this.

What the Alpinisto throws in is a bonus rope strap underneath the lid (the one that hides in the lid from earlier) that really locks it in place. The rope didn’t slip or flop out of its location when I had that one secured.

As promised, this daypack accommodates every ice and mountain tool I threw at it — Black Diamond’s new Hydra Ice Tools, Petzl Nomics, and even my Grivel piolet. It leans on a straightforward setup. There are dogbone-style attachments that feed through the tools’ eyes and elastic cords for the tool’s shafts that are adjustable up and down along the pack’s external daisy chains.

The tools were secure, even if they were a little bit bouncy on the pack. The pack’s pick loop doesn’t exactly bury the picks like some other packs do. But again, they’re secure. You’re not going to lose a tool on this setup.

Previous iterations of the Alpinisto relied on external crampon pockets. The new version forgoes the pocket altogether, which I consider a worthy upgrade. The Alpinisto instead relies on two adjustable horizontal straps between the external daisy chains to secure a pair of crampons nested together.

Crampons have so many contours and points that the straps lock them in place pretty easily. Yes, there’s a chance you could theoretically lose one while bushwhacking or scraping through the rocks (unlike with a crampon pouch). But I prefer this attachment system. It’s secure if you rack the ‘pons correctly.

Last, the Alpinisto comes standard with a detachable helmet net that firmly connects a helmet to the outside of the pack. Again, nothing revolutionary, but a critical feature nonetheless.

Gregory Alpinisto 30: Who It Is For

Gregory Alpinisto 30 is a fully featured alpine climbing daypack that packs in just enough features and comfort to expand its user base into the day-hiking crowd with some trade-offs. For $230, you get everything you’d possibly need in a climbing pack — tool and rope carry, helmet packing options, and a strippable design.

Old-school alpinists might even argue that you get more than you need in both features and grams. But let’s be real — 1,080 g is pretty dang light for a backpack. And this pack didn’t leave me wishing for much else.

Would it be my first choice for a dedicated day hiking backpack? You could do a lot worse. It’s comfy even if the removable hip straps weren’t my favorite, and it’s got all the other features you’d need, including external pockets and a comfortable back panel. The same goes for ski touring. It has that base covered if it needs to, but the main drawback will be the lack of a dedicated avalanche rescue tool compartment.

The bottom line is that the Alpinisto 30 thrives in the vertical — the approach, rock, ice, and just about anything else you’d encounter on route.