Recently I was able to acquire a second black GR1… which puts my black GR1 count to 2. I bought my first GR1 well before August, 2011 and used it to train up for my first Challenge with class 053. I’ve used it in 8 GORUCK events so far (every event except for GORUCK Heavy 009) and brought it along on several mud runs. In addition to that I used it as my only EDC bag and brought it almost everywhere.
Pictures
Here’s some pictures of the two backpacks right next to each other. I need to apologize for all of the dirt on the shoulder of my used ruck… I haven’t had time to adequately clean it yet. In all of the pictures the left GR1 is the new one and the right GR1 is the old one.
I tried to get the rucks as close to each other as I could so that there would not be any change in colors due to the lighting. As you can see the new ruck is a lost “crisper” than the old one but that will change with time. It just needs some more love aka abuse.
Another picture of them together… the new one looks taller because it’s new. Once it’s beaten down it won’t stand so tall anymore.
Here is the picture with the dirty shoulder strap. All it needs is a little more scrubbing and another run through the washing machine and it will look beautiful just like it’s matching shoulder strap.
Here’s a closeup of the new ruck’s shoulder strap and the clean shoulder strap of my older ruck. As you can see from the coloring in the picture apart from some random dirt the rucks look almost the same.
You can see that the used ruck definitely shows its wear in the label. One of the threads is coming out and it’s a lot more worn down than it’s brand new counterpart. Labels are on the inside so no one will ever see this.
Sometime around a year or year and half ago GORUCK changed the way that the shoulder straps connect to the ruck. The red circle shows the previous method where the nylon runs right into the ruck. The green circle is the new method that GORUCK uses which they call a “bat wing” that connects the shoulder strap to the GR1.
Finally it looks like somewhere between the creation of these two rucks GORUCK changed the mesh that they use on the inside. Looks like the newer mesh (right) has slightly larger holes than the older mesh (left).
Conclusion
From these pictures I wanted to show how a GORUCK bags looks after going through numerous events. In addition I wanted to show any differences that I’ve noticed in how GORUCK makes their rucks. There haven’t been too many changes from 2.5 years ago to now aside from the “bat wing” and the size of the mesh on the inside. I think it’s amazing that my old ruck looks almost as good as my new one considering what I’ve put it through.