Bergans and Safeback Announce Award-Winning Avalanche Backpack

Bergans has designed the world’s first ski mountaineering backpack integrating Safeback SBX. Even before launch, the pack has received two ISPO Awards.

Using the mountains of Norway as a development lab, Bergans and Safeback have teamed up to create the world's first ski mountaineering backpack integrating the Safeback SBX avalanche survival system. Now both the backpack itself and the Safeback SBX system have each received an ISPO award.

Bergans has always been synonymous with products that meet the complex demands of outdoorsmen in Norwegian conditions. In these mountain environments, preparedness and flexibility are essential to deal with constantly changing conditions and exposure to weather.

Until now, avalanche packs have been specialized products, with use cases that are limited to wintertime in avalanche terrain. Bergans Y MountainLine Daypack 40L is a highly flexible backpack product that can be configured to fit the needs of mountaineers year-round.

This pack allows the user to add and remove most of its parts to tailor the pack to their needs on that day. From ultralight to high capacity, to highly organized configurations: Y MountainLine Daypack 4L delivers it all. On top of that, this is the world’s first backpack that is compatible with Safeback’s unique SBX avalanche survival system. This Norwegian invention ensures continuous air supply if you are buried in an avalanche or tree well, without requiring a mouthpiece. Tests have shown that this can increase potential survival time during burial from 15 minutes to over 90 minutes. The system will be available as an add-on to the backpack and is integrated into the top lid of the pack.

Bergans is grateful for both the ISPO Award and the close collaboration with Safeback.

“Bergans has many years of experience developing products and systems for alpine environments, and we are always looking for new technology that can contribute to a better and safer experience out in nature. The collaboration between Bergans and Safeback has been a particularly exciting project where we have gained unique insights into Safeback’s groundbreaking technology and analysis of dangerous avalanche burial situations. Bergans has delivered important contributions to the development and testing of SBX’s practical implementation in a backpack. The result of that hard work became the ISPO Award-winning Y MountainLine 40L Daypack, which is a part of our new Y MountainLine collection. This collection will be composed of our highest-end products for demanding activities in the mountains – just as much in the summertime as in wintertime,” said Lars Erik Corneliussen, Director of Product & Design at Bergans.

Despite an age difference of 108 years, Corneliussen believes both companies have quite a lot in common.

“SBX and Y MountainLine have been a very good match from the very beginning in that both will be entirely new to the market, deliver high technical performance, and are specially designed for activities in steep mountain terrain where safety is a critical point of focus,” added Corneliussen.

Safeback SBX avalanche survival system is also a winner of the ISPO Award in 2022. Y MountainLine Daypack 40L is among the first-ever packs launched with this system.

“Safeback’s purpose has always been clear: to create products that can help save lives in the backcountry alongside forward-thinking backpack producers. We are fortunate to have a company like Bergans in our home market, who have worked with us throughout the prototyping and testing phase to produce a pack that integrates the SBX avalanche survival system. We look forward to launching this pack together next season,” commented Tor Berge, CEO and Co-founder of Safeback.

Bergans’ Y MountainLine Daypack is designed to be the only pack you’ll need for most of your mountain adventures, regardless of season – from a climbing daypack to a fully rigged ski mountaineering pack equipped with Safeback SBX.

The product will be available in Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands for the Winter of 23/24.

Bergans of Norway has been driven by dedicated and passionate outdoor enthusiasts for more than 110 years. With the Norwegian wilderness as our playground and seasoned polar explorers and adventurers on our team, we create technical performance garments and high-quality outdoor equipment. Always aiming to provide you with the ultimate outdoor experience – regardless of season and activity. As genuine nature enthusiasts, we strive to reduce our negative impact on the environment to ensure that our business is as sustainable as possible so that the future generations will benefit from the great outdoors.
Read more: Bergans.com