Reviewing the Deuter Climber 22L Kids' Pack After 3 Years of Hiking, Backpacking, & Climbing

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You may have noticed that I like gear. That’s probably not terribly surprising for someone who likes the outdoors enough to create a YouTube channel and accompanying blog site. Yes, some of it is just being a “gear head.” But there is a bit more to it.

The things that we do - alpine climbing, lead climbing, etc. - can be dangerous. Sure, the likelihood of either a severe accident or even a fatality are pretty low and can be mitigated through our choices both before and while we are in the field. One of those sets of “choices” we can make before we get into the field is to make sure we have the right gear for the activity, objective, weather, and the like. So, finding the right gear for the job is a big part of how we mitigate risk. That’s pretty important when you are talking about life-and-limb types of consequences.

But the definition of “right” when talking about “the right gear” isn’t always straight forward. The more we get into gear, the more we learn that all of our gear has tradeoffs. Wider skies float better but don’t carve a turn as well (generally). A skinner climbing rope is easier to carry but has more risk of getting severed on a sharp rock. And so on. Because there are tradeoffs, there is the broad reality that gear that is pretty good at everything isn’t the best at anything. That’s kind of where the Deuter Climber 22L Kids' pack comes in. It’s a good, generalist pack. Like we discuss in the video, it doesn’t have the ideal features for any specific kind of trip: mountaineering, technical climbing, backpacking, etc. But it has enough features across the spectrum to make the pack serviceable for all of these activities. Certainly, it is most tuned for mountaineering, but it can handle these other trips, too, if we are willing to put up with a few inefficiencies.

But that’s where the added dimension of it being a piece of kit for the kids comes into play. It is on thing to get a specialist piece of gear - say an ultralight tent - for a specialist activity - say a thru hike. But we can assume that, as long as we take care of that piece of gear it can last us many years. With growing kids, that simply isn’t the case. If we bought specialist gear for all of the various outdoor adventures, we’d end up having to turn over a whole lot of equipment every few years or so. I don’t know how we could afford it.

So, for kids’ the generalist piece of gear has the added benefit of limiting the breadth of gear we need to buy. That matters when we can’t expect to have that gear last 5, 10, or even 20 years.

Accepting the limitations that come with any generalist equipment, we’ve been more than happy with the Deuter Climber 22L Kids' pack. It’s been one of the “all-star” items that we turn to again and again, and we never have to worry about it doing the job. Take a look at the video to get more specifics on what we see as the pros and cons, and then, if you are considering this pack for your little outdoor adventurer, you can find the Deuter Climber 22L Kids' pack here.