Today I finally got up the nerve to weigh my ALICE pack and it weighed a whopping 95 pounds!

Damn, for a while there I wish I never weighed it.

Now the serious part. My unit seems only to give out the large ALICE pack for long-range/high capacity type stuff. For shorter patrols and things we have a small ruck about the size of a comercial jan-sport type pack.

After about the 10 mile mark my arms are hurting and the veins in my arms are buldging out. not to mention a serious pain at the point where the sholder straps come in contact with my sholders.

Anybody out there have any ideas on what I can do to help the situation?

Thanks

Tropic

Tactical Tailor (and others) make upgrades for the Alice that can help.  

www.tacticaltailor.com/catalog/mods.htm

Get rid of some of that stuff!

The aftermarket straps and waist belts will help some. I have a pair of Eagle Industries shoulder straps from www.lightfighter.com that have saved me much misery over the last year. Your ruck won't be lighter, but it will sure feel lighter

definatly get a GOOD waist belt.  I havent had any experience with the TT/Eagle stuff but I modified a MOLLE II belt and it makes a world of diffence

Get a hold of DISTANT THUNDER TACTICAL via assaultweb.com
They run an outfit that is starting to do mods...supposed to be GREAT WORK! Talk it over with their shop and see what they can do for you. He's done great work on some items for me...pretty darn good turn around time on things too!

Do the aftermarket strap-mod and waist-belt first.  It really does help quite a bit.

I'd recomend against bothering with any customizing of the ruck itself.  You have to turn it back in, it needs to stay fairly GI anyway so no one will sqwak about your fancy straps (face it, if your unit's load list has everything under the sun going into your ruck, combined with a USGI issue only policy, a custom ALICE is wasting money).

The straps and waist-belt are worth the price.  They are temprorary mods that don't attract too much attention, and that's really the only thing that's going to work in your situation.  The straps and waist-belt are also cheap compared to getting custom work done to an issue piece of gear, or buying something that really does work.

Ross

IMO.
The one and only 'one stop' add-on for the ALICE is HSGI (High Speed Gear Inc.) ALI-PAD.

Surf over to Geardo.com's forums.I and some others have posted AlICE Frame and suspension mods.

Duct tape and sleeping pad foam can do wonders to an ALICE for very little money...

BulletcatchR