Initial Review of the Bongo Gear Becker Patrol Pack Mk. II

I wanted to put this up for those who are interested in what exactly I was carrying on my day hike the other day and to provide further details on the Bongo Gear Becker Patrol Pack MK II. While I am an admitted pack addict, I also am always looking for products and methods that I can pass on to my students and readers, and I’m happy to share another winner.

Normally I try to split my equipment carriage into two categories as I’ve written in the past, I call them line 3A and 3B. Line 3A is the items that can get you through an unexpected night out as well as your enablers. Line 3B is the sustainment load, helping you to live out in the bush for a much longer duration. This of course is just one way to slice the pie so to speak, and it’s far from perfect. There are very few load carriage systems designed from the ground up to do this, and it often requires a bit of modification and experimentation on my part to find options that work together.

I think there’s always been trade off’s in load carrying equipment between capacity and weight, fighting load and sustainment load, etc. My solution of splitting the line 3 gear is largely based on my environment and expected usage. Living in Montana I have to be able to operate in all the seasons, and the colder it gets the larger and bulkier a lot of my gear gets, necessitating the need for larger packs. But I still want the option to go fast and light, so maintaining my critical gear in a smaller bag so I can ditch the main pack makes sense to me. I also have a much higher probability of using a small day pack loaded for 24 hours in a “grab and go” capability than I do a large ruck packed for multiple days. Either that, or all those years on QRF have made it so I don’t feel right unless I can grab my stuff and go.

But in warmer weather carrying a large pack that’s only half full just so I have something to hang my daypack on doesn’t make much sense and the line between a large sustainment ruck and a day pack begins to blur. A good friend and I, whose experience I greatly respect, were discussing this and he shared with me some information about a “new” pack. I say “new” because it’s actually a reintroduction of a classic pack design with some modern design improvements. A small company named Bongo Gear, with Ethan Becker’s approval, has updated the design and began producing the Becker Patrol Pack Mk. II.

To say I was excited was a bit of an understatement. While the ALICE pack gets a generally negative opinion, I tended to like my medium ALICE pack during my time in the Infantry. Whether it was packing around a PRC-119, a bunch of improvised breaching charges or a couple SMAW rockets, it did the job. Of course I was proverbially “young and dumb” in those days, and there were definitely a lot of improvements to be made (in me and the pack). But some of the features of the pack are still useful for those looking for a good patrol pack, and the Becker Patrol Pack is a major improvement on the medium ALICE and has always been considered to be the “ultimate” rendition of this pack for light infantry use.

So when I heard that a small company was going to be reintroducing the Becker Patrol Pack I had to check it out. I got onto the Bongo Gear website and was surprised to see the price was a very modest $265. Used medium ALICE packs are going for almost $200 at times, so to me this is a very good price. I ordered one up in OD green and it arrived within a week.

On initial unpacking I was already impressed. The quality seemed very good. The material wasn’t the cheap plastic feeling stuff that some packs are made of, this was a material that reminded me of the ALICE pack material. I’ve often wondered why more people didn’t utilize similar material instead of Cordura, it’s very lightweight but tough. I’ve seen way more Cordura wear out than the ALICE pack material, but that might just be my own experiences too. The first thing I did was weigh the pack so I could record it in my weight database I’m building. Mine came in just under 5 pounds 10 ounces just like the manufacturer said it would.

The pack itself is a top loader similar to the ALICE, with one big main compartment and some smaller sewn on pouches around the outside. Sewn on pouches have a few advantages over MOLLE pouches in that they are typically lighter for the size (no back panel or attachment hardware, no webbing needed to attach it to the pack either) and more secure, as in no attachment to come loose and have a branch rip your pouch off.

The Becker Mk. II has four large pouches around the bottom of the pack, one on each side and two on the back. These are all big enough for a 1L water bottle if not a 1.5L plus snacks packed around them. It also has two smaller pouches on the lid as well. These are roughly the size of a double 5.56 magazine pouch. The lid itself has a nice claymore sized pouch on top and a zipper pouch inside as well. There’s also a fair amount of MOLLE webbing placed around the exterior of the pack.

The pack comes with a nice hip belt that I feel is a good proportion to the size and expected usage of the pack (carrying weight up to 50 pounds). It has MOLLE placed on it as well for any en route items you may want. My friend who put me onto this pack has a .75L water bottle holder on each side of his and I think that’s a smart idea.

The interior of the main bag is finished in hunter’s orange material, this helps to see in it under low light and also you could turn the pack inside out for an emergency signal. There are multiple pockets inside for organization of smaller items and also a large hydration bladder pocket in the center with a center opening for the hose.

For suspension the pack comes with a frame sheet with one aluminum stay. I came across a video recently where Evan Hill of Hill People Gear describes in detail how to setup an internal frame pack. I followed his instructions for setting up the Becker Mk. II and it fits like a dream.

The shoulder straps are very comfortable, being wide enough to distribute the weight. They are thinly padded, about 1/4” thick, but I found them to be very comfortable.

I took this picture after I almost fell asleep taking a rest break after a particularly steep climb. I’m fully in the pack at this point and couldn’t have been more comfortable. Sleeping in this pack would be no problem, just throw a Swagman roll and poncho over the top.

The day hike load

This past weekend I was able to get out and put a few miles on the Becker. Since this is a true patrol pack, I wanted to test it in as close to a patrol setting as I could. I picked a 3 mile route that would take me over a wide variation of terrain out in my training area. I grabbed my equipment and packed the Becker in a similar manner as I would have my medium ALICE for a patrol “back in the day” with a few additions or improvements.

Junk on the Bunk- A) 3 days of chow B) 2 pairs socks, foot powder C) 2x 1 Liter bottles, cup, bandana D) Cook kit- Cup lid, spork, 100g fuel canister, titanium stove, small Bic E) Team leader book F) 55 Gal drum liner G) USGI poncho H) Rifle cleaning gear – 3 rods, eyelet, bore brush, chamber brush, patches, CLP, Bolt spare parts I) Hygiene gear – Wet wipes, hand sanitizer, bug spray, chap stick J) ECWCS waffle top K) Tool kit – spare batteries, headlamp, weapon light, cordage, tapes, camo face paint, water kit L) bipod M) Sniper veil N) Swagman roll O) Night vision kit – PVS-14, Crye Nightcap, J arm, laser bore sight, IR photon light P) Shelter kit – Silnylon MEST, 30’ ridgeline, 4x titanium stakes Q) Gaiters R) 3/4 length foam pad Not pictured- emergency kit and titanium spade

Emergency equipment – Large irrigation syringe, pressure dressing, gauze, tourniquet, dry tinder, orange bandana, space blanket, orange signal tape, Signal mirror, storage bag. This rode in the internal lid zipper pouch.

Outside equipment locations- A) Sniper Veil B) Bipod C) Titanium spade (in pass through) D) 1 Liter bottle, Titanium cup, bandana, water kit, honey sticks E) Tarp, ridgeline and stakes F) Poncho G) 1 Liter bottle, Clif bars. My team leader book and rifle cleaning gear were in the top claymore pocket.

Fully loaded the main bag is only about 70% full. The main bag also has a nice snow collar with a drawstring to keep the weather out of the main bag. This is helpful if you have the bag stuffed or if you have to store bulky items under the lid.

The pack with water was 31 pounds 5 ounces. I certainly could have put more gear in there, but I packed this in a realistic manner for the weather and duration. Even if I were to add the equipment necessary for me to be out in colder weather like we had for the Fieldcraft and Bush Tactics courses it still would be under 40.

I’ve talked in the past about wanting to get the combined weight of the “big three” (my pack, sleeping gear, and shelter gear) to sub 10 pounds. I’m happy to say the big three were 8.5 pounds on this trip, and that’s with a 40 degree sleep rating. That’s not a guesstimate from a manufacturer either, that’s based on my own experiences with the actual gear.

This, combined with the weight of my rifle and kit bag equated out to roughly 24% of my body weight.

My food was a hodge podge of stuff I had laying around and not exactly an ideal selection based on the high performance information detailed in my Less is More posts. It was 6470 calories total, or 2156/ day. Coming out to 1.19 pounds per day. That’s actually more calories than I carry during class, but even at a lightweight sounding 1.19 pounds per day, it still only ranked in the moderate category for calorie density.

Conclusion

The pack was very comfortable, as I said in my post about the day hike I was out for 6 hours and I had the pack on for about 90% of it. I never once felt like the pack was pulling on my shoulders or hurting my back. The waist belt stayed put on my hips without sliding down and I was able to keep the looseness in my shoulder straps Evan described in his video.

I did do a little rerouting of the lid straps to the outside of the center pockets instead of going under them. This was so I could cinch down on the pack lid to get it tight. I think with the smaller load I had in the pack it wasn’t full enough to use them as they came. I also pulled the lid straps out of the MOLLE webbing on the bottom of the pack so I could stick my sleeping pad through them. I think modifications like this are expected on a pack like this and I don’t think this is a negative thing, but actually a positive showing how versatile the design is.

Lid straps rerouted

Lid straps rerouted

Each of the outside pouches have their own cinch strap as well to compress the items in the pouch. I thought this was a good idea and I liked being able to tighten up loose loads so there was no rattling. In fact, the only noise I could hear while doing the jump test was the claymore pocket zipper pulls jingling. This will be an easy fix by making some zipper pulls with 550 cord and putting some heat shrink on the zipper pull.

While I don’t have many, many miles on this pack I do have quite a few on other packs, and I see a lot of quality and value in the Bongo Gear Becker Patrol Pack Mk. II. I think it’s a great three season pack for those of us living in the northern part of the country, and an excellent four season pack for those in the southern part. It’s not a huge pack, having about 41L of total capacity, so it will require you to be efficient with your equipment selections, but that’s what we should be doing anyways.