The Alpha SL: Prototypes to Production with Arc’teryx’s Chris Hodgetts

Arc’teryx’s new Alpha SL pack (30 L) uses Aluula Graflyte fabric to create a lightweight pack.

With Arc’teryx launching their new Alpha SL pack featuring Aluula Graflyte—a lightweight fabric with some interesting properties that may push pack design boundaries—we checked in with Chris Hodgetts, the brand’s Design Director for Hardgoods and Accessories, to explore how the legacy brand iterated and scaled production of the Alpha SL.

What prompted this interview is a bit of buzz in the pack and outdoor fabric world. Let’s begin with Aluula Composits, a West Coast Canadian company. If you are into kiting or niche pack companies, you have likely heard of Aluula Graflyte, a UHMWPE fabric that is lightweight and waterproof. From a design and manufacturing perspective, Graflyte offers some compelling advances. Sure, the fabric can be sewn—not an advance—but it can be heat-welded, as it bonds to itself with heat. This means pack manufacturers using the fabric can build with reduced stitching and no glue. The key here, also, is durability. We are in the early stages of Graflyte packs, but we are bullish on the durability.

Arc’teryx is releasing a new Alpha series pack (the cornerstone of their alpine pack line) called the Alpha SL. We’ll have Gavin’s first look published shortly. The pack’s SL naming convention must mean super light, as it is built with Graflyte and is markedly lighter than the traditional Alpha FL 30 pack: Arc’teryx claims that with certain add-ons removed, the pack has an over 50% reduction in weight. The Alpha SL is an alpine climbing pack that could, under some use cases, become a ski pack. Many readers also dabble in the off-season with climbing, so we chose to step out of our lane and learn more about the fabric and how a company like Arc’tery’x iterates and brings new materials into their design shop, iterates, and ultimately scales and brings a new pack with new materials and manufacturing processes to market.

The interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

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THR: I’ve used one Aluula pack; it has a distinct auditory signature. Call it crinkly. When the designers at Arc’teryx are talking about materials from a sensory perspective, these modern materials all have somewhat distinct properties, be they tactile, auditory, or something else. How would you describe this new material from our human senses?

Chris Hodgetts: First, it’s something that we definitely obsess about, like the hand feel and the sound and the visual characteristics, and we go down a path where we’re like, “oh, this is a crinkly material that looks like rumpled paper after use or after manufacturing. We’re definitely considering that. There have to be pretty significant payoffs because there’s going to be compromises with every material decision. The Aluula fabric has some real upsides for certain use scenarios when we’re looking for specific performance characteristics. So yes, that auditory crinkly experience, for sure, that’s a part of the experience. It is shockingly light; some of the protos we had were literally pushing down the limits of how far we could go with lightness. These packs were like floating—well, that was the perception when you dropped them, and they would do this on the way to the ground, kind of floating down like a leaf. We actually went that far. We then dialed it back because we’re benchmarking against a known product in the Alpha FL series, and we want these things to last. We’re not going for the lightest we can build. It’s the lightest we can build and still last as long as what we’re currently building. That is the benchmark.

And then there’s the color of it. That’s another thing we talked a lot about, and that translucency has some upsides as well. We thought a lot about being categorized with the white packs of the world, which we have not ventured into in the past. And we were ready with this one because it does something different.

Gavin Hess: Ironically, I saw a gray Aluula HyperLight, a little prototype out in the wild a few weeks ago.

Hodgetts: We looked at the gray. We were also pushing to

explore color but weren’t ready. We weren’t ready in terms of the performance that those alternatives delivered at this stage.

THR: Let’s talk briefly about the material attributes you touched upon, such as weight, durability, and waterproofness. Arc’teryx is a legacy brand that can scale, and bringing a new material on board is probably a big choice for the company. What specifically about Aluula’s fabric offerings was attractive to you folks?

Hodgetts: First, there was the possibility of the lightweight and the strength-to-weight ratio of the ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene [UHMWPE], the Dyneemas of the world. What it’s offered has always been attractive: the strength-to-weight ratio. In thinking about it, I always start with why we haven’t been there before at Arc’teryx because this has been around forever. There’s been all sorts of Dyneema things, and we’ve certainly always kept apprised, and there’s always been lots of samples in the building that we’re trying. But nobody’s ever been able to stick anything to the material. And so, ultimately, you have these strong packs that, over time, become burlap sacks. We’ve all experienced that over the evolution of UHMWPE packs, nothing sticks to it well. 

Aluula has a secret sauce. They have developed the capability of bonding films that are waterproof to UHMWPE textiles at a molecular level. This is a permanent bonding that is totally unique. That’s their patent and the secret sauce that Aluula really started doing in kites. 

They’re a local brand in Victoria, and we were inspired right away. We’ve been talking with them forever and had samples of their material, and it was never quite right. It was stiff. It was great for airframes in kites—it had greatdimensional stability but remained crinkly and not durably waterproof over time. So that’s why we never have gone down that path in the past. 

When Aluula started pushing into outdoor pack solutions, we started seeing something that might provide us with a way to really shed weight in technical packs where it really made a difference. But waterproofness for Arc’teryx is critical. We are based on the coast. We live in a very wet environment, and that’s a part of our brand promise, really. And in alpine environments, I think that’s a critical factor to success is something that remains waterproof. 

We saw this as a chance to deliver and present a similar solution to our Alpha FL packs in terms of performance and simultaneously drop a ton of weight. So we started the exploration with Aluula, and when we saw this possibility, our two brands got together and built this partnership to develop a textile appropriate for the end use we were talking about. They had some textiles in line, and we started iterating with these textiles to create a solution that was going to be a pack that was actually durable over time, that we could seal, and it was waterproof—because their original textiles were not that. We’ve kept super focused on delivering this material where it can actually make a difference for people using it. For example, big alpine objectives, where the kind of weight savings we’re talking about can make a difference. We’re talking about shedding weights from our current FL pack, like the Alpha FL 30, which weighs around 650 grams, and we’re dropping the weight on this fully kitted Alpha SL to 428 grams. If you strip off some of the webbing, it reduces to a 316g pack. That’s a big weight savings for people who count grams, and our FL was already pretty light. All this gets down to a solution level with the new pack.

Hess: Is the new pack 125 gm2 or 98 gm2 weight fabric?

Hodgetts: This pack is 98gm2. That was part of what we were exploring, as the original Graflyte fabrics were really not as strong as we needed them to be. We went through a huge iterative process on this internally. Our team gets out and gets after it at various levels; we engage with our athletes, who are critical to our design, prototyping, and design process. Depending on what kind of testing we’re looking to do, we have a few athlete go-tos. For this project specifically and at the beginning of this experimentation, we broke a lot of packs. 

We had this iterative process of material development, which was probably one of the coolest things about the partnership between Aluula and us. In a fairly short time span—because of the proximity of the two companies and the spirit of innovation that we share—we were able to build fully equipped packs to a production level here in North Vancouver. We can build a pack, get it out at the early stages, and break it. We could learn how those failure modes are happening, whether it’s our construction methods, the material, or a combination of those things. Then, we worked with Aluula to identify specific performance characteristics we wanted to improve to achieve the desired results.

Gradually, we built up a textile because they were able to iterate very quickly and change things in a fairly short time, then build with those materials and get those packs out in the field, breaking them inevitably. 

One of our athletes, Paul McSorley, is our go-to if we want to break stuff. He’s new-routing, and when he goes out with his buddies, he always gets the drill and all the heavy stuff if they’re hauling a bag up. If we need to destroy something quickly, Paul is the person who absolutely destroys things. That’s one test method for accelerated wear. 

So that iterative process with material development and to get things in the field, and at the same time learn about the unique construction requirements we were developing along the way with the material—those two aspects of pack design and development were growing together.

As we learned something about construction that may influence the needs of the material, we had a development feedback loop along with a field testing feedback loop. It’s a cool part of the process that we do a fair bit at Arc’teryx historically and continue to do: this was a great and inspiring example of where that worked well with Aluula during the development period. 

The Alpha SL alpine pack. Photo: Arc’teryx

Hess: How different are the construction methods relative to the Alpha FL? It seems like there are a lot of similarities between those TPU [thermoplastic polyurethane membrane] fabrics that can be heat laminated versus the Aluula fabrics.

Hodgetts: I’m looking at this Alpha SL 30 sitting here that, yeah, they’re significantly different relative to the Alpha FL. That self-adhesion that I think Jason referred to is one factor that attracted us to this fabric: it has the ability to structurally laminate to itself with heat. So, the possibility of eliminating glues goes into several aspects of the attraction to this material. There’s the sustainability or the future potential for circularity. So often, we have nylon and TPU and technical fibers like Dyneema and Vectran all mixed together, and long-term, those make wonderful, durable solutions for textiles, but they’re hard to consider end-of-life solutions for those. This Aluula material is on a path toward a mono-material solution that potentially has a really good end-of-life solution. That’s another huge attraction to this, and by eliminating glues, we’re also keeping all the materials in this pack in a similar chemical material family that lends itself to recyclable or other end-of-life solutions in the future. We don’t have that infrastructure fully developed, nor does Aluula, but we’re both focused as brands on having that as a potential opportunity and working towards that as another phase of the development. 

We have also worked hard with our pack manufacturer to redevelop ways to build with this material. UHMWPE is heat-sensitive. Our current Alpha FLs can cook for a long time under heat presses to get super strong laminations. That same approach would destroy this new fabric. So there’s a lot of learning, developing, and dialing in the manufacturing processes with Aluula on-site at Arc’teryx. Our design developers have binders and binders of tests, pull tests, and destructive testing and have honed in on our manufacturing criteria. We then partnered with our manufacturer to scale that as well.

THR: How long did this process take, from beginning conversations with Aluula to scaling the manufacturing process?

Hodgetts: Since we first started dabbling with Aluula’s fabrics, I would have to back it up before the partnership. The partnership started three years ago, and we had various versions of their fabric in-house for many years before that, including some of their kite fabrics that we were playing with to build an understanding. There was a slow burn for a while. And then this project started in earnest when the pack partnership kicked off three years ago.

THR: From a manufacturing perspective, there are nuances involved with constructing a pack with Aluula Graflyte compared to traditional materials where sewing and gluing are the norms. I assume these new packs are manufactured offshore. To get everyone up to speed on the process, what are some of the logistics involved? 

Hodgetts: You’re talking about scaling it up and having something reproducible. It all started with designers and design developers building stuff in-house and honing in on ways to build within specific construction parameters. Then we take those processes to the factory and work with them on their machinery, in their environment. We work with a Vietnamese manufacturer—a long-time partner—and we can scale this up on their machinery, in their shop, essentially, and then test those packs. So those packs built with our manufacturer also had to go through a field testing cycle and lots of lab and disruptive testing. This is all part of the feedback loop to the original material, so we can hone in on some material characteristics to ensure that we can continue to produce this at scale. There’s a ton of work there, for certain. 

Obviously, Aluula had begun offering material handling parameters. But, a part of what our team has done is reallychallenge the idea of what might be possible with that material, and push that. We had to develop our own methodologies, and then that’s part of what we now have to continue exploring and see what else we can do with this stuff.

THR: Gavin has the pack in Wilson, Wyoming, so I have not had an opportunity to check it out. Here’s the most basic question: can you attach a pair of skis? 

Hodgetts: One of our testers, Sam Hennessey, is an alpinist-skier. He’s put skis on his pack for many missions. The pack comes with a set of compression straps to the A-frame, which are removable. There are a bunch of lash points as well, so choose your own adventure for ski attachment. 

Sam’s probably got the most hours with the new pack. One of the points where we’ve been super impressed is how long the material is holding up because we’ve always been skeptical and asking if we will be compromising. Especially with some of the earlier iterations we were shredding. But now, we’re really stoked about where we’ve got the material and the construction platform. It’s actually outlasting the FLs in a lot of ways.

We have this cool ReBird part of the brand and all these service centers for repair, resale, and upcycling. As a result, we’ve developed in-field fixes available for anybody with one of these packs at no charge. They’re just self-adhesive Aluula fabric patches if you get a little cut in the material—those cuts will also not propagate. It’s almost impossible to tear apart. 

THR: I’m sure there are a ton of possibilities with this fabric. Do you see this fabric being incorporated into the ski pack line? 

Hodgetts: I can’t speak specifically about where we plan on applying this, but currently, there’s a bunch of exploration, some of them farther along, and they’re all targeted at places we believe the specific performance characteristics of this textile and our new construction method can make a difference in the pathway because it comes at an expense. This is a very premium fabric and construction technology. So we are focusing on it. We’ve built a lot of things out of it, and it was bright and shiny for a long time, so we built a lot of things out of it, as we do. But we want to focus as a brand—and this is our intention— on ensuring we are making technical performance improvements with this textile where we believe it makes a significant enough difference to justify the price tag that comes with it. That’s our focus. We want to make sure that this stays super performance driven. We’re clear on how we want to apply this technology across our brand in a very deliberate way.

THR: Is there anything else you want to address regarding the new material and/or the pack? 

Hodgetts: I think one of the things you called out in your written questions was the scale of this brand, and you’re sort ofalluding to a larger entity versus some of the niche brands. I think Arc’teryx is known for high-quality hard goods, yet we are much larger than any boutique brand. 

Certainly, there are some things we all grapple with at this scale, for sure. Still, some of the advantages I see in being able to bring in a niche supplier like this at our scale is that we have a robust organization of quality and supply chain that allows us to hold to account all our suppliers for sustainability and social responsibility standards. It’s cool to be able to do that and influence other companies. That only happens in a much bigger brand. We can ensure that what we are producing has gone through an awful lot of checks and balances. 

Big scale is also some of the challenge. It brings into question how nimble we can be. But we also continually seek to find ways to do that, and that’s a pretty cool thing that we can influence at our scale: if we stay focused we can deliver technical performance solutions from a use-based mindset. If we can continue to do that at scale, we have succeeded. I believe we are on that path. 

Our brand character stays very true to our original values but at scale. That gives me a reason to keep coming to work and to keep working here. We’ll stumble, for sure. It’s absolutely a very large organization and is growing, but we have the support to fundamentally continue to do that. 

Some companies, like niche brands, came to market before us with Aluula textiles. That’s the difference between a niche brand that can grab something and commercialize from a company like ours doing it at scale. To be able to do that at scale, I think, has an awful lot more checks and balances that also make me sleep better at night, when there are people out using these items in situations where no-fail is required of the gear. It’s a little slower process, but that’s the company we’re in.