The death of my Gregory Z55

On my last trip a week ago, I discovered a problem with my Gregory Z55 that I bought in 2009 or so.  The lid’s zipper kinda pulled away from the fabric.  Not a big deal at first, but it kept getting worse to the point that the zipper was totally unusable and the lid was half open, rendering it useless by the end of the trip.  I just stuffed my garbage in because it was too big to fall out of the hole.

Gregory has a lifetime warranty on its packs.  I was hoping this would be easily fixed by the manufacturer, or possibly even getting a lid to just replace this one.    However when I contacted customer service and sent in pics of the busted zipper, I was told it wasn’t covered under warranty and they referred me to a repair service.  I was told I could send the pack in and they would call with pricing, etc on my options.

I don’t know about you, but Im not going to pack up and ship my whole backpack to the East Coast just to find out I don’t want to pay for a repair or replacement, and then have to pay to get it shipped back.

So I called and tried to get an estimate on a repair.  I got a callback promptly, and the guy said they may have a spare.  He went to check and lo and behold they had one left (in yellow).  However the price was $47.99 or something and the guy told me getting the repair would actually cost more once you throw in the shipping, etc.  Keep in mind I bought the pack for around $100-120 7-8 years ago.

I figured, fuck it.  Im getting a new pack.  I sold my Gregory Z55 to defray the cost and bought a new pack the next day.  No point in putting cash into an old pack, when I can just re-up and get something better suited to my needs for only a bit more money.

This experience aside, my Gregory pack was badass and one of the best gear purchases Ive ever made.  I don’t know how many trips I went on with it.  It carried weights below 30 pounds superbly well.   Above 35+ lbs was tolerable, but painful on longer hikes.  It took upwards of 8 years for anything to even go wrong with it.  This winter, I even used it for winter backpacking combined with a homemade pulk.  This was the bag that really got me back out there again, and was versatile enough to handle any kind of trip I could throw at it.  I’ll measure my next pack against this one and I’ll be sure to discuss my new pack purchase after Ive gotten a few good trips in.