Mutant 28 is smaller and lighter than the original Mutant 38, which has also been tweaked
Osprey's original Mutant 38 is a stripped-down climbing and alpine pack and gained a lot of fans when it was first launched in 2008. For this winter 2011, it's joined by a smaller, lighter Mutant 28 variant and also gets a glitzy new hi-vis green colour scheme.
Essentially the new 28-litre Mutant is more of the same streamlined design, but with some neat new additions that also make it onto the revised 38-litre version of the pack.
Same Fabrics, Some Tweaks
Fabrics are still the same light, but tough materials, albeit in high-vis, retina-burning green, but there are some other changes too. Where the 38 has a reverse-wrap, stowable hip-belt, the 28 gains low profile hip fins. There's a new compression system called 'Top X', which lets you compress the pack further once the lid has been removed, that's present on both packs.
Tallking of removable lids, both packs are highly stripable to save weight when needed. Lids on both can be jettisoned, as can the hip-belt webbing on the 28, framesheet and bivi-pad on the 38 and compression straps on both.
Hipalon Racking Revised
The 'Hipalon' racking system has been refined and the Racking Tubes on the hip-belt, which take a carabiner are joined by a mini gear loop. Finally, there's a thoughtful internal 'essentials' pocket so you have somewhere to stow bits and bobs even once the lid pocket has been removed.
The new Mutants should be in the shops in the next couple of months, price for the Mutant 28 is £70 and the Mutant 38, £90. We're just waiting for weights for the packs and we'll update the article once we have them.
More Osprey Packs info at www.ospreypacks.com.
