Salomon ADV Skin 12
The best running pack I have owned, comfortable and stable enough to forget about over fifty kilometres.
vest
The scorecard
Hugs the body and spreads the load so evenly it stays put on steep descents, without cranking it tight.
The stretch fabric swallows more than its stated 12 litres, happy with two flasks or a full load.
Curved harness, shorter back panel and flasks that rest flat under the bust. It solves the chest-compression problem.
Around $280 is a genuine investment, though two years of hard use has more than justified it.
Empty soft flasks can be fiddly to slide back into the deep front pockets on the move, the pole bungee system has a learning curve, and at around $280 it is a genuine investment upfront.
Runners who want one do-it-all vest for everything from a two-flask training run to a hundred-kilometre race, and women after a harness cut for female anatomy.
Anyone after a budget vest, or minimalists who only ever carry a flask or two and never need the full capacity.
The long run
This is my long-race vest, and has been for two years. I ran both Tarawera and Ultra-Trail Australia in my original version, and it never once let me down over either. That is the highest praise I can give a piece of kit: on the days that mattered most, I never thought about it. It just did its job and disappeared.
I rate it so highly that when it came time to write this review, I bought the updated model rather than reviewing an old one. The new version looks different in the photos, but the changes are mostly refinements rather than a rebuild, which makes sense to me. Salomon had this vest dialled in already. The pocket layout is essentially unchanged: front stretch pockets, shoulder pockets, the rear tunnel for the bigger gear, and the stretchy fabric still swallows more than its stated twelve litres suggests. It carries a genuine load when you need it to, but it is just as happy with only a couple of flasks up front and a shell in the back. That range is exactly why it is a true do-it-all vest rather than one you only reach for on the biggest days.
The stability is the other reason it has stayed my favourite. You do not have to crank it tight to stop it bouncing; it hugs the body and spreads the weight so evenly that it stays put even loaded up on steep descents. Two years and two ultras in, nothing else I have tried has come close on comfort and capacity together.
The bigger change this time was moving to the women’s version, and it has made a real difference to how the vest sits and feels. It is cut specifically for female anatomy, and the differences are not cosmetic. The front harness is curved rather than straight, which means it follows the body instead of pressing flat across the chest: no compression, no restriction on a deep breath late in a race when your breathing is already working hard. The back panel is noticeably shorter, so it sits properly on a shorter torso instead of riding down, and the neck angle has been adjusted so the straps do not cut in awkwardly at the shoulders.
The flask position is the change I noticed most on the run. In the women’s version the soft flasks are designed to rest flat under the bust rather than sitting directly over it, which sounds like a small thing until you have run for hours with flasks pressing where they should not. It is more comfortable, more stable, and it stopped the shifting I used to get as the flasks emptied. If you have found previous vests constricting or awkward across the chest, this cut genuinely solves it, and it is the reason I will not be going back to a unisex version.
None of that dents the verdict. This is the best running pack I have owned, comfortable and stable enough to forget about over fifty kilometres and more, with the storage to handle whatever a long day demands. It is the one I will keep reaching for when the distance gets serious.
From the test
