@Ogg- no way i'd carry glass. just thinking of cans and i'm insane, so i thought immediately of protecting them from a puncture and a hell of a mess.
@David- I will be riding chairs as well, so I'm very curious to see how annoying a pack is. I see many leaving them on and hope to be able to do the same. Have the pata 20L and the mystery ranch 16L d route on order for testing.
snow on the way for mammoth and i'll be doing a 2-3 week trip from socal up to spend a week in big sky with skiing both ways, so i guess we'll have plenty of time to figure it all out in the coming month or so.