One of the features that was omitted from the Levity was a dedicated ice axe attachment system. Fortunately creating your own is easy, you’ll just need two things:
- About nine inches of cord (I use LiteOutdoors 1.8mm guyline)
- A Lightrek pack bungee attachment ($2.50, 4g)
Ice axes are typically stored by pushing the shaft through a loop near the bottom rear of a pack until it catches on the head, flipping the shaft up vertically until it’s near the top of the pack, and then cinching the shaft down against the pack so it’s nice and snug. Since the Levity has no loops large enough to put an ice axe shaft through let’s start there.
Step 1: Add an ice axe loop
Look for one of the little blue loops hanging out of the bottom front corners of the Levity (where front is the side of the pack that faces away from you when you’re wearing it):
Cool. Now, take the piece of cord and use it to make a loop through this loop. I prefer to use a figure eight knot to join the ends of the cord together:
Sweet. Don’t forget to test out whether the shaft of your ice axe fits through the loop or not and adjust accordingly.
Step 2: Add a cinch
The bottom left and right edges of the Levity’s top pouch have some elastic in them which we’re going to take advantage of to help keep the shaft of the ice axe snug against the pack. First, locate the top pouch buckle that’s on the same side of the pack as the newly-added ice axe loop:
Fan-tastic. Now, the hardest part: thread the loop end of the Lightrek attachment through the little blue loop that connects the buckle to the top pouch.
Incredible. Hang in there, only one more step!
Step 3: Add ice axe
Alright, it’s game time. First, push the shaft of the ice axe down through the ice axe loop until it’s all the way through and the loop catches on the head. Make sure that the more-pointy part (the pick) of the head is facing towards the center of the pack and the less-pointy part (the adze) is facing away. This is so you don’t poke people inadvertently.
Sadly there’s no picture for this step. Nobody knows why.
Next, flip the shaft up so that it’s resting against the buckle with the Lightrek attachment threaded through it. Wrap the attachment around the ice axe and cinch it down like so:
Astounding. And you’re done! It should look more or less like this:
Ok, well, maybe it should look a little less sad since my pack was half empty – normally the top pouch will sit much higher and the bungee will be more towards the tip of the shaft, but you get the idea. For additional stability you can wind the strap that connects the top pouch buckle to the bottom of the pack around the shaft a few times before tightening it down.
I used this system on my trip to the Enchantments and it worked great, the elastic in the top pouch helps keep the axe snug against the pack and reduces floppiness.