Flying with a haulbag

I will be flying back from a climbing trip with a BD touchstone haul bag full of gear and i will be checking it, any tips?

Im thinking about putting it in a duffle bag.

Boston Logan to Chicago Midway on Southwest.

Earlier this season i flew out west and back with a big haul bag. I did not have any problems with it, but i did carry on most of my gear. This way i got around the 50lb weight limit for checked bags. You should not have a problem through security, they just made me pull out my rack,look at it, then toss it back in the pack. Just make sure that your backpack and suspension straps on the pig are properly stashed.

i've flown with a haul bag quite a few times and haven't had any problems. when you get ready to check it in, maybe take the waist belt off and throw it into the bag, just to save the buckles from getting busted.

ditto what ben said about carrying on gear to get around the check-in weight requirements. i usually keep the gear to size 3 camalot or smaller. i think valley giants or big bros might freak the safety folks out.

What size pack have people carried on?

Man, I thought this was going to be about logging airtime on an aid climb!

Just flew yesterday with all my gear, no problems. Just check the bag, and keep it less than 50 pounds.

I flew to yosemite in the summer of 2008 from out east with my touchstone haul bag and a 45L Black Diamond backpack. Put clothes, ropes, sleeping bag and pads in the haul bag. at under 50 lbs, it wasn't a problem, and with the straps all stashed, i didn't even get any funny looks from the clerk!

the backpack had a full double rack, as well as a magazine and cameras. while probably pushing 50 lbs, United airlines allowed it as carry-on.

so, in summary, >50 lbs haul bag wasn't a problem and a 45L bag stuffed to the brim was great as a carry-on bag.

Best of luck on your trip!

no issues (bare bag or in duffel) so long as it's <50lbs (take off straps if bare bagging :)

btw. worked for portaledge too (under-weight but off-sized item but still no charge...southwest -god bless their souls!

i have gotten my VERY over stuffed 50L osprey pack on as a carry on with no questions asked. i am flying out to SLC next week and will hopefully get away with carrying on a slimmer looking 50L pack and a 60L duffel, my idea is to claim the 50L as my personal item and the duffel as the carry...lets hope it works

Ben Mahaffey wrote:i have gotten my VERY over stuffed 50L osprey pack on as a carry on with no questions asked. i am flying out to SLC next week and will hopefully get away with carrying on a slimmer looking 50L pack and a 60L duffel, my idea is to claim the 50L as my personal item and the duffel as the carry...lets hope it works

but as of a week ago, SW still allowed you to check 2X 50lbs bags for "free" (...i.e. cost of your ticket). No real reason to do this I'd think.

Thanks for all of the info traveling with gear isnt that bad.

So i though i would share how i packed my haulbag for my trip.

I wrote my name address and other info on the bottom of the haulbag. I also tape the holes closed, I did miss the hole that was in the center.

Bottom of haulbag

I put a 55 gallon heavy duty garbage bag in the haul bag and put my climbing shoes on the bottom.

Haulbag and shoes

Put my two ropes in a garbage bag and my climbing gear in a seprate garabage bag and put them inside the garbage bag in the haul bag.
ropes

gear in bag

Gear in bag

After that, dirty underwear from my climbing trip.

Then i tied it all up, and left a love letter for TSA, saying don't use any chemicals please.
TSA Note

Stoed the straps and waist belt then. I tied up the top of the haul bag.
Tied Up

All of this weight 50lbs exactly.

At the airport I asked the southwest airlines bag check person to put the haul bag in a plastic bag. I lifted the haulbag while he put the 60 gallon clear plastic bag around the haulbag and tied it at the top. Its the same plastic bags that they use for golf clubs, baby seats and strollers.

My carry on bag was a 40L marmot eiger bag and i had put the following in.

Each cam had a biner and the nuts were racked on a couple of biners and everything was clipped to a 2' piece of 8mm cordelete.

Full set of Metolius TCU's
Full set of BD C3
Full set of Alien Cams
Full Set of #.3 - #3 BD C4 cams
Full set of Metolius Nuts
Full set of BD Micro Nuts
Full Set of DDM offset Nuts
Full set of DMM IMP Nuts.
Harness with daisy chain, belay devices, gloves and lockers.
Helment
Hoddie

As you can guess i was pulled a side for the TSA agent to check my bag. I did ask him to change his gloves before searching the bags, I told him there was climbing gear in the bag. He didn't have a problem with this. He pull out the helmet, hoodie, and harness. He did't put rack all the way out, he just look at it then swabbed the inside of my bag with a swab and put the swab in the explosives detector. Then i was on my way with no issue.

40L carry on
Carry on Gear

nice photos, and tutorial on packing haul bags! How was the overall trip!?

The trip was awesome.

We left Chicago at 7PM and drove until the fog was so bad that we couldn't see a road strip in front of us. So we slept at a rest stop in eastern New York around 4am. We woke up late and drove to the Gunks. My climbing partner just had 7 staples removed from his head and 6 sitches remove from his knee 5 days earlier so we were stuck climbing a bunch of easy climbing routes easier that 5.7. So we hopped on Easy Keyhole at the Trapps which is a awkward fun 5.2. So we did that climb then wandered around the base of trapps checking out some climbs and started making a future tick list. We were planning to spend the night there and climb a bit in the morning but it was suppose to rain the next day so we drove to boston and show up there at around 3AM.

Gunks Mid Climb

The next day we were exusted from driving so we unload all of his shit from his car, ate dinner, drank some beer, and then set off to find some local rock in boston to climb. We end up at hammond ponds and did a quick trad climb on 'Milk Run' and get a quick fix.

Hammond Pond

On friday we headed over to Quincy Quarries to get some climbing before meeting up with friend for dinner. Quincy quarries is a pretty cool area to climb at minus all of the graffity on the rocks which makes it very slippery in some spots. We TR two climbs Layback and Lurch.

Layback

On Saturday we headed up to Rumney, NH to get our sport climbing fix. We hopped on Mom's Pancakes, Glory Jeans, Easily Amused, A week with Pete, and Rise and Shine. This was our first time to rumney and were throughly impress at the area and the climbs and will be heading back there in the future. And for a Saturday there was only about 10-15 people hanging around the parking lot wall.

Rumney Climb

While at rumney there was a couple that was climbing next to use. They were move to another climbing when and she was walking around in sandles. She ended getting her big toe nail caught on somethign and it just about ripped it off. The whole toe nail was lifted up and pulled back and bleeding everywhere. Nasty.. We when over to check it out and i had a first aid kit on me and bandaged up her big toe toe them helped them down to the car. We felt bad because a little injury like that is a trip ender for climbing since you can't put a climbing shoe on anymore.

On sunday i flew back to chicago.

Looking back i wish we could of climbed some more but we were just glad be be out climbing 3 weeks after our climbing accident at Devils Lake.