The Ozark Trail: A Guide to Hiking Missouri’s Mountains

Carry everything you need for your next adventure in the Ozark Trail 45L Montpelier Backpack. Before heading out on your next hike or other outdoor adventure, make sure to grab the Ozark Trail 14 Liter Hydration Hiking Backpack. This 14L pack is designed for maximum versatility so you can focus on the great outdoors. It features two main compartments for maximum storage and organization, as well as a shove pocket with a clean, gusseted design for carrying extra items.

For the water bottles I just use Platypus .5 liter and 1 liter flat style bottles, which you can fit in the main body of the pack on top of your other gear. Before purchasing this pack I used a more traditionally ozark trail canopy styled, and heavier, backpack for daily walks. I recently attended a seminar that explained the major difference of carrying lighter gear while outdoors. This daypack came in handy just for what I intended.

ozark trail backpack

I spend a great deal of time on the water every summer boating and fishing in Northern Michigan. I will often load a large cooler up at the beginning of the week and leave it on my Pontoon packed with drinks and ice. If you have a boat and bring kids or friends on the water, you know that once you leave the dock the requests for drinks start rolling in fast and furious.

I sweated just a bit but not too much since the walk was short (and I didn’t want to sweat after a shower). I did finish my activities very sweetly and was able to walk and hike without carrying anything in my hands. This pack has no extraneous features, save for the small front zip pocket and an internal hydration sleeve. There are no compression ozark trail backpack straps or other means of securing anything to the outside of the pack, aside from the “daisy chain” on the front. My only knock on it would be the lack of a small water bottle pocket. Aside from the main pack bag, there is a small zippered compartment on the front, that, depending on how much you have stuffed inside, is pretty tight.

Cracking this thing open sounds like you are opening the airlock on a spaceship. You can tell there is a serious seal established when you latch this shut. The Ozark Trail 45 Qt Rolling Thermocooler also comes with an internal tray, which the other two do not. Lastly, I haven’t yet had a chance to test its waterproofing in a huge down-pouring of rain, but it did hold up in some strong winds surprisingly well.

Future users may want to seal or waterproof the seams a little better. Visit our Trail Directory for an overview of the sections. Trail section pages include maps, directions, and downloadable GPS (.gpx) and Google Earth (.kml) data. Join Outside+ to get access to exclusive content, 1,000s of training plans, and more. Choose this pack if you prefer a smaller yet spacious design, as it has useful features and the durability of larger options.

The four or six tent pegs hold the structure down but are crucial for the tent to stand by itself. The Ozark does need those pegs in the ground to be self-standing so setting up on rocks would be infeasible (at least without applying some clever tenting skills). Thru-hiking is defined as hiking the contiguous 230-mile backbone of the Ozark Trail in one trip. A thru-hike can begin at the Onondaga State Park and proceed southward to the Eleven Point Western trailhead, or move in the opposite direction from south to north.