backpacks

The Cerberus is based on the design of a pack Mystery Ranch made about a decade ago called The Spartan. It was a very small pack intended for military purposes. Only about 1000 were produced, but the bag took on a life of it’s own after production becoming a bit of a collectors item, with good examples usually selling for over $1000 USD. When Carryology announced the Cerberus, I was extremely intrigued and pretty much decided immediately to buy one, despite the very high price tag.

My first high end backpack was a Mystery Ranch, the Rip Ruck 24 I wrote about a few years ago. Like any good gateway drug it led to the second, the Mystery Ranch Urban Assault 24. You’re probably thinking on how lame that name is, and you’d be right, lets stick with just UA24 for the rest of this. Luckily the bag is about to be discontinued and replaced with a new similar line with a much better name.

I’ve been hunting for the “perfect” backpack lately. For me, that’s a bag which is: fairly slim and low profile big enough for a weekend away at home hiking at home at the beach at home for a software engineer with a well protected laptop compartment Mystery Ranch caught my eye, not so much their military tactical stuff but their more toned down everyday carry bags. Specifically I narrowed it down to either their Urban Assault 24 (yes, the name makes me cringe too), or the Rip Ruck 24.