Possible Improvements?
The F-stop Loka is an exceptional bag, but there are two things I would change. Admittedly, these are minor and pretty subjective, so they may not be issues for you.
• The mesh side pockets are just barely too small to hold Nalgene bottles. While the Loka is hydration bladder compatible, I’ve had a couple situations where it would be nice to store water bottles externally, and the Nalgene is my water bottle of choice. Slightly bigger pockets would make that possible.
• There isn’t a clear way to store an avy probe, shovel, or climbing skins, all of which are essential backcountry gear. While I can easily carry all three items on or in the pack, it doesn’t seem that the pack was specifically designed to accommodate these items.
(Typically, my practice is to store the probe inside the pack, on the side of the ICU. The shovel blade also goes inside the pack, between the ICU and the front of the pack. And I usually attach my skins on the outside of the pack, using the two main clips on the middle front of the pack, since I feel more comfortable stashing wet, snowy skins outside the pack rather than having them inside with my camera gear.)
The front pocket on the pack has a long vertical zipper with that drain at the bottom, which seems like the perfect place to keep skins, but I couldn’t get my 190cm long, 115mm wide skins to fit, and I think your skins would have to be much smaller to make this work.
That internal sleeve designed to fit a laptop could potentially serve a dual purpose of also holding a shovel blade, but unfortunately my old Voile shovel was both too wide and too long to fit. But shovel blades seem to have gotten narrower and shorter over the years, so this might work for newer shovel blades.
Bottom Line
The F-stop Loka has been a pleasure to use and take on adventures. It is well thought out, it’s easy to use, it’s extremely durable, and it inspires confidence that my camera gear will remain safe. I now consider the Loka to be an essential part of my camera kit.
But the best feature of the Loka won’t be listed as a bullet point on the F-stop website. It’s an intangible, but it’s probably the most important thing I can tell you about this pack:
Whether skiing, biking, or backpacking, the Loka makes me want to take my camera with me more often. And that’s the primary reason why I regard the Loka as essential.