Best Dry Bag For Backpacking Ultralight 2024 – GWC Mag

Common mistakes when purchasing a dry bag for backpacking

Too Heavy Duty

It’s not foolish to assume you would want the most waterproof-possible dry bag. You’ve got to keep your gear dry, right? However, this could lead you to choosing a dry bag designed for rafting, submersion, or other use cases that would be considered overkill for backpacking. A river-grade dry bag is constructed with much heavier duty materials, and might weigh 5-10x as much as a dry bag for backpacking, without any added benefit. A packrafting dry bag should be heavy duty like this. But an all-purpose dry bag for backpacking should never weigh more than four ounces, and you should strive for less than two ounces.

Too Small

Another common mistake people make when purchasing a backpacking dry bag is choosing one that is too small. While it’s tempting to size down to minimize volume in your pack, we recommend avoiding this. A bit of extra volume does not reduce your hiking performance, is easier to re-pack, and most importantly prevents you from over-compressing down. Repeatedly over-compressing down will damages the plumes and reduce their ability to loft. This is the most common reason for why older sleeping bags and quilts feel less warm than they used to when they were brand new. If you are storing a sleeping bag or quilt, never choose a dry bag less than 10L. 10-25L is the sweet spot for this use case.

Compression Straps

Avoid choosing a dry bag with compression straps. These models often weigh 3-4x as much as a minimalist roll top, and almost always lead to down damage via over-compression. Not only do they extra weight, they also add extra cost, and failure points. Lastly, they create lumpy, dense, spherical ball-shaped objects that fit poorly into packs and create empty space pockets in their vicinity, wasting the very volume savings that you worked so hard to achieve.