Table of Contents
So you’re a snowboarder and you need a backpack for when you ride. Maybe you were using your everyday backpack and it’s not checking all the boxes anymore. Maybe you’re like me who has a backpack that’s actually for snowboarding but you need to step it up a bit for some possible side/backcountry adventures. Perhaps it’s also a pretty cool bonus if it looks badass and very slim and slick and versatile (both in function and in style) wherever you go. If this sounds like you, keep reading to learn about the Jones DSCNT 19L backpack.
Table of Contents
What makes a backpack a “snowboard” backpack?
Actually, I’ve written an entire separate article about what makes a good snowboard backpack since it’s a topic in of itself.
After you’ve read that, let’s get aspect by aspect so I can tell you what I think.
Look and Style
As always, let’s start with the most immediate, perceivable, and obvious: the style. For me I really really like it. It’s more tall than it is wide and that’s what I honestly prefer for snowboarding. I’ve had some where it’s bulky. I’ve had snow backpacks that are…spacious. I mean it’s not wide as in shoulder to shoulder but the bag is wide in the other direction: there’s more space between your back and the “front” of the backpack.
In terms of storage, travel, or all-purpose, this is great. In fact my other bag is like this. However if you’re looking for a good performance bag, you kinda want it “skinnier” so there isn’t much space inside for your stuff to jostle around. At the same time specifically if you’re a snowboarder, you really want this closer to your body. I’ve had many times where I’m weaving through trees and then a branch hooks onto my bag since I’m “wide” when you’re riding sideways and you get yanked and clothesline’d out of nowhere. Funny shit lol.
The stitching of everything is great. No holes, no water (melting snow) seeping in. The overall texture of the bag isn’t pilling with all the abrasion. I’ve dragged it on snow, mud splashes (water and paper is good enough to wipe it out), and different textures when riding airplanes, shuttles, and lifts, and it’s been great after!
Minimalist look, clean and plain black, pff, what’s not to love.
Ergonomics
Straps
This guy has a sternum(chest) strap and waist strap which is useful like I’ve told you in my what makes a good snowboard backpack article.
I appreciate that the waist strap has a larger belt. It makes the clip/unclipping very easy, even if you’re on gloves.
Pockets and slots
There aren’t a lot, and I guess we shouldn’t be expecting much since it’s a minimalist backpack.
I got used to my Dakine Mission 25L wherein there were small side pockets and for the main area, there are two zippers. Compared to my DSCNT where there’s only two (more like essentially just one).
The Jones DSCNT 19L has two: one is the goggle pocket at the top, and the other is the main/one-and-only main zipper to the main container of the bag. That’s it.
Pro-tip: when you want to store everything, tuck your goggles inside your helmet and then wrap the helmet outside with the helmet mesh. I promise you it will not fall. Now you have the goggle pocket open and you have a snack pack!
Let’s quickly run through the inside pockets from what’s closest to the camera:
You got this red pouch supposedly for emergencies I think and quick access. Within that actually there’s a clip maybe for your keys?
The next is what looks like a laptop sleeve. I think its original purpose is for a water bladder, but hey laptop sleeve too. Remember this is a purpose-built bag and technically this was meant for side/backcountry!
After that it goes deep. For the front flap there are two “water bottle-looking” pockets. It’s not a pocket. It goes through. I think that’s for your collapsible ski poles. And that’s it!
It’s rigid
I’m pretty sure there are two bars from top to bottom that’s keeping this bad boy rigid. I don’t know what material it is if ever. Maybe it’s also the good padding on the back. Maybe it’s both.
Either way, I like it. Since this is a tall bag, you wouldn’t want it to be flimsy and collapsing when you try to stand it upright.
In a way it kind of helps you with your posture too! When the bag’s all snug and both sternum and waist straps are tightened, it feels like it’s forcing you to have this ergonomic standing posture!
At the same time, this rigid frame doesn’t really add much weight that the minimalist bag becomes concerning.
Weight
The entire bag is light. If you consider the materials used, the quality stitching and assembly they did, the zippers, it’s pretty impressive! It definitely lives up to the minimalist design and intention.
At the same time, it’s not like the layers of the bag is thin that a pencil would poke through it. I’m not going to tempt fate and shove a sharp knife in there but I did have so many moments where my bag was stuffed and there were boxes or objects with corners on them that it would poke the bag. No damage…for now. lol.
Volume
I didn’t know that 19L actually is a lot of space. If you contextualize it, imagine 9.5 Coke bottles (the 2 litre ones) in that bag. Sounds like sorcery, I know.
It is actually possible and realistic because first, it is tall. It looks normal on photos but it’ll only make sense if you get one and put it side by side your existing average backpack.
Next is that, it actually expands a fair bit.
Notice in this photo it goes wide(top)-skinny(mid)-wide(bottom)? If you actually unbuckle the snowboard straps and let the bag inflate, it gets pretty big. It’s as wide as the bottom, if not more.
Notice also how the side looks, especially towards the bottom. Notice how the side was folded in of itself. So just imagine if you unbuckle the straps.
If you really needed to, you can fit a lot of stuff in that bag!
Zippers
I love the zippers. They are bigger than usual. If they’re not, then they have this extra thread so you have more leverage when reaching out and pulling them. It works well even if you have your gloves on!
Features
Top handle
There’s nothing fancy about that top handle but I just wanted to give a shoutout for it. It gives a very comfortable-yet-sturdy feel on that top handle loop. It’s comfortable to hold even if you’re having to hold your bag like that for a bit (think airport lines).
At the same time it’s really sturdy because I’ve yanked this bad boy out of stacked overhead compartments or bus shelves and it doesn’t feel like I’m about to break my bag.
You know when sometimes you have a bag with the nice and rigid handle but when you tug on it, it feels like you’re about to rip the rest of the bag? Yea not this one. It feels like it’s stitched to the core and chassis of the bag.
It also doesn’t fold or tangle that you have to pay attention and hook it with your nails. It’s just an ever-ready handle. I love it! Small things I nerd on.
Helmet mesh/carry
I really love the helmet carry feature. It’s very useful at the end of the day. At first I was hesitant because it’s just a mesh and it’s not really “carrying” your helmet from below but rather it’s just pressing it against the bag to hold it in.I feel like my helmet’s gonna slide out of the sides.
When I did try it (and I tried it multiple times), I was very impressed! Your helmet is actually very secure. I’ve tried hopping, running, getting shoved around in a full bus, and it never dropped my helmet. It was totally secure and in place the whole time. The mesh in itself is a bowl/spherical so it’s really hugging your helmet from all sides.
It’s so reliable that what I do is I put my goggles in the helmet and then I strap the helmet in this helmet carry. What ends up happening is that you don’t have to hold your helmet constantly like a bucket when walking, and at the same time since they’re both outside your bag, both the helmet and the goggles are getting consistently air-dried while you walk outdoors so they’re almost dry by the time you get home (assuming a 30-40m commute).
Ice axe loop
I haven’t gone a full backcountry experience (e.g.: it’s just you and your friends). My Vallée Blanche trip is technically “backcountry” but that’s with a tour guide, assisted, and it’s a popular spot with people.
If I had to backcountry with proper equipment like shovel, ice axe, etc, then this ice axe loop would be necessary.
For now, I’m repurposing the ice axe loop as a gloves hanger. Similar to the helmet carry, it’s useful at the end of day. What I do is I clip my gloves together (through the loop) and then I just let it dangle the whole time while walking home. It’s very secure and your gloves is definitely bigger than the loop (plus gravity) so it’s not going to fall off. It airs your gloves out while you walk outdoors and dries it on the way home. Greatly helps to not stink up the gloves.
Whistle
You know that red buckle in your sternum strap? Yea that’s a whistle.
My one and only problem in this bag, specifically the pockets
Well it’s about one aspect of the bag but it presents 2-3 user experience challenge to it
Things sink to the bottom
Since it’s only one main pocket AND it’s a tall bag, if you drop an item down it just go straight to the bottom. And they’re all shuffled and mixed at the bottom.
To continue, when you open the bag and when both your snowboard straps are buckled in (the two straps that encircles and grips your bag), I find it difficult to dig for items in the bag. Because as mentioned, anything you chuck in there just sinks at the bottom.
I’m not even suggesting more pockets. I like the one, main pocket idea. It’s just the accessibility of it. Most if not all of the entire 19L that you carry is in this pocket so if you’re saying ‘this pocket is hard to access’, that basically means also that ‘this bag in its entirety is hard to access’.
I’m ok with things sloshing inside too. I can live with that.
Opening too small, no easy way to reach down
When you unzip the bag, you’ll naturally just open it to the point until you hit the top snowboard strap.
If your bag’s fully packed and clipped on and you wanted to just simply get something in your bag without unbuckling the straps, you’re not going to instinctually try to open it up beyond that trying to wiggle your finger under the strap in order to reach for the zipper. You’ll just open the pocket up until that point.
When you do, it’s not enough opening. As mentioned, if you packed the emergency pocket (the red pocket inside) with stuff in it already, it even makes it more difficult to get things inside. Not to mention if you do have a goggle in the goggle pocket.
You can technically remedy this by loosening the snowboard straps (or just unbuckle them). That way the entire bag has more space to expand. When I tried this, it definitely helped the main pocket opening problem.
If you do actually have lots of stuff and you can fill that 19L, then it definitely makes sense and I would suggest it. However if you’re like me where I try to pack as little as possible, it doesn’t make sense to loosen the strap and make the bag loose and saggy just to solve the opening problem. It makes the bag baggy (ba-dum-tss) and there’s just more space for your things inside to slosh around.
“Why not just fully open it?” (lay it on the floor, unclip the two snowboard straps, and yank it wide open)
I tried fully and completely opening it. I unbuckled the top snowboard strap (the bottom strap doesn’t get in the way of opening the main pocket) and then I unzipped the main pocket all the way. It’s almost 80% of the length of the bag so when you do fully open it, everything’s so easy to get.
If you watch backcountry videos this is essentially how they unload things from their pack. To be fair, usually they have large backcountry things in there (e.g.: shovel, probe, etc) so when you do need to pull them out, you really do have to open up your bag wide open anyways.
So the more I’m thinking about it, maybe it’s purpose-built very precisely for that and I’m just using it wrong. To be fair, that may very well be the case. I’m open to that idea and I’m ok with that.
I’m just thinking that maybe this would still be a valid concern even in a backcountry setting. E.g.: what if you needed to get your gps phone at the bottom? There’s no way to do this unless you kneel on the snow, unbuckle the snowboard strap (so if you have a snowboard strapped in there or a snowshoe, they’ll start to be all over the place after this), lay flat your bag, whack it wide open, only to get this small item at the bottom.
(and then you’d have to organize and re-pack everything again.)
“But maybe you should’ve used the goggle pocket instead if you have tiny items with quicker access”
I do. I did. It’s 10/10 useful exactly like that on specific use cases. Unfortunately those types of specific use cases aren’t always the case.
It works in my situation for example when I’m travelling (flying to a ski resort). I repurpose the goggle pocket as a small pocket. Since I’m travelling with a snowboard roller bag, all of my hard goods are in that bag (goggles included). This way, it frees up that goggle pocket for snackies, passports, phones, hand cream, etc. So in this situation I love it.
Sample scenarios
A situation where it didn’t work well was when I was in Chamonix. I had an epic day and when I got to the bottom, it was really warm. While waiting for the bus, I decided to shed off my layers and started stashing it in the bag. I put beanies, etc in the main pocket, the helmet in the helmet outside mesh, and then I put the goggles in its pocket. So now, for me this goggle pocket is full and unusable. I have my goggles in there. I’m not going to put keys, cards, etc with it in there. I don’t want to damage my lens. I could just chuck the goggles in the main pocket but..~well there’s a reason why goggle pockets are a thing for ski/snowboard lol.
So now I essentially don’t have a small pocket. I just chucked the keys in the main bag and I just busted it wide open when I got to my door like a raccoon in garbage bin.
I do like and would prefer that there would be more with the DSCNT. At the same time, I understand the design and purpose of it so it’s ok.
Recap
If you’re looking for a backcountry-ready backpack that’s also minimalist and skinny, this is a good option for you.
