During a long trip like this you will wear out or break equipment. This is natural and expected because of the long usage time. What is not expected, is equipment breaking after a short period of time, for now good reason. Today the aluminium frame of Jan’s backpack broke during a casual walk. No abnormal load or usage at all! This is classical metal fatigue and should not happen to a backpack that is made for a 50-kg load (we only have a 35-40 kg load) and it is even approved for military use. This is a Recon Synkroflex 125L made by Norrøna. After digging around, we found out that this problem has haunted this backpack for a long time. Norrøna just chose not to do anything about it! On the plus side, Norrøna has fantastic support, so they send out replacement parts overnight. But this is no excuse to not fix a problem that has persisted for many years.
The backpack also has a few other problems. The hip belt loosens at the pivot point in the back. If you are unlucky you can lose the nut or bolt when you are out walking and that can be really bad if you are far from civilisation. This problem is also something that has been known for a long time. The hip belt also grinds against the aluminium frame, so that it wears out quickly. See picture below of these problems.
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