Gear Portage

One of the issues with travelling with climbing gear is storage. The options of backpacks, haul bags, briefcases, suitcases, etc are near to endless but over time i have found a huge liking to the Metolius range of bags. The design of them is simple: super strong materials, minimal webbing straps and weather resistant ( but not water proof, at least not the ones i have tried). You need strong base materials as irrespective of how you fly, baggage handlers are going to try and destroy your bag and its contents inside-there are a huge amount of videos on youtube showing the care that baggage handlers dish out. 9/10 your bag is going to be at the base of a tree during the day and it is going to get branches drop on it. Excess webbing straps on the outside are also known to get caught on baggage trays at the airport and also get caught on every branch, twig possible whilst trekking through the bush in search of great climbs. Ultimate waterproofness to me is not a necessity as if needed, a dry bag can be used to store stuff inside your pack but having materials that can take a light drizzle without getting soaked is a huge benefit. One of the downsides to the simplistic design is they are not as comfortable as mutliday trekking backpacks- there is no high-tec air gap between you and the bag, the straps rely on your shoulders rather than your hips to take the load and if you do want anything from the bag, hope that you packed it at the top or else everything is coming out for you to get what your after. But the Metolius range i use are haul packs and not designed for multi day treks. I have a 80ltr Salewa backpack that fits like a glove but i hasn't taken many airports for it to start looking a tad frayed around the edges.

The brown(mescalito)and black bags(crag station) are perfect size for carry on luggage. The blue(sentinel) and grey(express) hold a large amount of gear despite not looking so big-the upshot of the strong design is that you can really cram gear in without fear of blowing seams. If weight allows you can get them shrink-wrapped together so that they fly with you as one bag ;)
 At times it would be nice to have wheels on them but all those wheels may add up to 1kg+ and that to me is better used with essential climbing gear ( and duty free of course) and is also something that is guaranteed to break sooner or later.....