Review: The North Face Base Camp Duffel Bag

The North Face may be the poster child of the Gore-Tex jacket that swept 1990s fashion, but if it has a real icon among its catalog pages, it's the Base Camp duffel bag. Introduced in 1979, the Base Camp duffel has undergone few iterations and changes. Somewhere along the way, it became Alaska's third unofficial state symbol, alongside the grizzly bear and the bush plane. Yet that's more a function of how sparse the competition is when you need to haul 130 liters or more in a duffel and less a testament to its features, which are sparser than its competition.

The Base Camp shrugged off two weeks’ worth of travel to and onto an Alaskan glacier like it was going on a Sunday joyride. Its toughness impressed me. It was a more grizzled man of the mountain than any of us. But like a grizzled, old mountain man, the Base Camp's toughness comes with a lack of a few of the more civilized touches and niceties of its competitors. To put it simply, unless you need to carry more than 120 liters in one bag, we recommend duffels from REI, Patagonia, and Eagle Creek that have more features.

The Base Camp comes in six sizes, from extra small (31 liters) to extra-extra large (150 liters). The small is perfect for a long weekend trip, able to make it on board an airplane as a carry-on. At the hefty end of the scale, few companies make a 150-liter duffel. Most of the competition, such as the Patagonia Black Hole ($219), tops out at 100 liters. For truly large expeditions, the Base Camp has few peers.

I gave an extra-large Base Camp the job of hauling 132 liters of precious mountain-climbing gear from New York to Seattle, Anchorage, Talkeetna, and the Kahiltna Glacier using a hodgepodge of SUVs, airliners, passenger trains, and bush planes. I used it as an impromptu seating and kneeling pad on abrasive glacier ice and left it outside the tent during multiple blizzards. You don't have to get it in yellow like I did, but it's the classic choice. You could choose from red, black, seafoam green, and a couple of blues.

The yellow is easy to see when you drop it from a plane and recover it later, but it does get marked up easily. Every yellow Base Camp I saw was blackened by the rigors of air travel. Black streaks worn like face paint appeared after the first time I checked the bag, and I've never seen a streak-less yellow Base Camp that wasn't brand-new. I can't say why, but I've never checked a bag that ended up looking so beat up after it reappeared at baggage claim, including the other duffels I tested in my guide to the Best Carry-On Travel Bags. Other colors fare better: A buddy's red Base Camp on the same trip didn't show any similar streaks.

Any humongous duffel bag needs to have backpack straps. Carrying them suitcase-style is too unwieldy and uncomfortable once you load it up with clothes and gear. I'm finding it harder and harder to recommend gigantic duffels that don't offer backpack straps. The Base Camp might be light on auxiliary features, but it does at least have straps.

They're … OK. Slightly padded, they didn't cause any discomfort, but I wouldn't call them comfortable; they simply did the job. The adjustable straps had a tendency to slip if you didn't give them a long, long tail, which got on my nerves. There's no pocket to slip them into when you're not using them, unlike REI's excellent Big Haul Duffel (8/10, WIRED Recommends), so they just flop around and get in the way.

The carry handle is entirely unpadded and more of an actual problem than an annoyance. Putting anything heavy in the bag, which is easy with one that measures more than 100 liters, can make the handle unpleasant to use. It's a baffling decision for The North Face to make, since it wouldn't take much added material to improve the experience. REI’s Big Haul does this better, with a nicely padded handle that doesn't dig into my hand, even when I've loaded it with 40 pounds of gear.

The two also-unpadded grab handles on either end of the bag are burly, which makes it easy to flip around when you need to. Nothing is going to break on this bag without some concerted effort of punishment, I'll tell you that. I swung, slung, slammed, and grabbed this bag over and over with a load of heavy gear and never felt like I was even close to popping a stitch or starting to tear.

Rather than the rectangular shape of most duffels these days, the Base Camp is a big cylinder. That’s not much of a problem for gear packing, because there's always a soft tent, sleeping bag, or piece of clothing to stuff into the recesses of a duffel bag to take up the extra room. It could frustrate folks who fold their clothes rather than roll them, though.

The exterior fabric doesn't feel as nice to touch as Eagle Creek's bags or the REI Co-op Big Haul. It doesn't feel bad, just stiff. And the strap material feels like nothing special. Both telegraph a brawny robustness, though. The outer material, except for the bottom panel and the straps, is water-resistant. It's not a drybag or waterproof, and The North Face doesn't claim it to be, yet I let the Base Camp wallow among melting ice for more than a few days and splashed it a few times accidentally with snowfall that'd soon melt into liquid on its surface, and it never penetrated the material or got the stuff inside wet.

Running under the whole length of the lid lies a zippered mesh pocket. The mesh was thick and could contain a lot of spare gear. I packed it full of accessory cords, a compass, toiletries, maps, and even a climbing harness with a full load of carabiners. With these kinds of mesh pockets, I usually have to worry about overloading and tearing them. Not so with the Base Camp.

Tiny items tended to get lost in the cavernous space inside it. Competing bags do this better. Both the REI Big Haul and Patagonia Black Hole have an exterior zippered pocket—good for quick-grab items such as campsite registration papers and headlamps—as well as multiple small interior pockets to organize gear. There is an open mesh pocket inside one end of the Base Camp that's perfectly sized for a white-gas fuel bottle or any other gear you want somewhat separate from the main compartment, but while useful it doesn't help with organizing small bits of gear.

There are fabric tie-down loops all around the exterior of the bag for securing it with bungee cords, cargo straps, or rope to backcountry sleds or vehicles’ roof racks. REI's Big Haul has a few gaps in its tie-down loop coverage, but on the Base Camp they run the full length of the bag's sides. The compression straps work well to cinch the bag down as tight as possible, for everything from expedition sled to airline travel.

As a mass-market, general-use duffel bag in most sizes, the Base Camp is outclassed by competition. It's not a bad bag, it's just spartan. Part of the Base Camp's appeal is its rugged, no-nonsense build. The other is its iconic link to a more primitive state of the industry. Outdoor gear has few grandparents that are still usable today. Everything involved in the wide range of outdoor activities goes through constant cycles of evolution, so it's rare for one object to remain so relevant across several generations of outdoor enthusiasts.

No other duffel I've used feels as burly or as simple. Yet it's missing the thoughtful touches of feel-nice materials, the color-contrasting zipper pulls, and the surfeit of small stash pockets found in the REI Big Haul and Patagonia Black Hole—things I often use and like. The RedOxx Expedition comes closest to the Base Camp's grit and toughness, but then again it's $405 and is made from a non-water-resistant fabric, even if the sewing and hardware are top-notch.

If you need a duffel under 120 liters, the REI and Patagonia bags will offer you nearly the same toughness with more bang for your buck. Larger than that, the Base Camp is one of the very few options on the market. Of those few (less durable) options, though, the Base Camp is your best bet for a bag that can survive airplane cargo hold and outdoor adventures alike. If you dig its old-school vibe and heritage, it'll do any job you ask of it. Given my experience so far, it'll last years, and like any good tool, you can give it a job to do and then forget about it. I have my issues with it: I dislike the carry handle, the lack of pockets, and the fact that my yellow bag looks like an artifact from a war zone. But like a reliable, old farm truck, it still did the job, even if it did so without fancy fuss or flourish.