Outlier partners with Hyperlite Mountain Gear to make the perfect pared down city pack. Waterproof, featherweight and backcountry tough. The Minimal Backpack.

Like many Outlier products, this adventure started with the material. In one of their many fabric hunts, the guys stumbled across something so different it was almost alien. Nonwoven Dyneema is startlingly lightweight, fully waterproof, and ten times stronger than steel. When they saw it, they knew they would have to do something with it, they just didn’t know what.

When Outlier encountered the elegantly understated, nonwoven Dyneema packs of Hyperlite Mountain Gear, they knew they were the right partners to work with. The premise was clear: to build the simplest and lightest pack suitable for daily use. Nonwoven Dyneema is extremely difficult to sew, so producing a simple design is crucial to making this stuff work. Thankfully Hyperlite’s Mike St. Pierre (a former chef at Per Se, no less) has been working with the material over the past few years and has even built a small factory in Biddeford, Maine expressly for his Dyneema bag production. By the time Outlier got involved most of the hard work was done. The two companies met out in Utah this past summer and swiftly came up with a plan to birth the Minimal Backpack. A roll top backpack that’s waterproof and packs down to fit into a jacket pocket.

The Minimal Backpack is made in Biddeford, Maine, USA. Available now on the Outlier Webshop for $128.