Fifth Season Squall Sack

The Fifth Season line of waxed canvas goods is named after the most dreaded Vermont season. Mud Season. Cold, wet, mushy, slushy, and of course, muddy. We designed the Fifth Season line to deal with the worst weather out there.

Wald Baskets need bags. Even if you are just running to go pick up some Keystone or a head of organic grass fed, Non-GMO, gluten free kale; a basket is only useful with a bag. I tried to think of an exception, a circumstance as to when no bag is better than a bag, and I can’t find one. Even if you don’t use the bag as a container, but just as a pad at the bottom of the basket, a bag is better than no bag.

Baskets came back into vogue after hipsters discovered Rivendell, but they were secretly always cool, like listening to Soft Machine when everyone else was listening to Zeppelin. Shortly after baskets became hip, bag makers started to fire up their sewing machines and make basket bags.

The best bags (for pretty much anything) are made from waxed canvas. Waxed canvas is pretty light, (compared to beefy cordura backed with a waterproof PU fabric), looks great, it’s repairable, it’s rewaxable, and it ages well. Synthetics don’t tend to age well. Colors fade in weird ways, plastics delaminate or get crusty and brittle, or both. Plus, cotton is renewable, plastic fibers, not so much.

Waxed cotton isn’t waterproof, but it’s weatherproof if sewn right. Our bags have a minimum amount of seams to keep water out. You can leave this bag in the rain overnight and in the morning your signed copy of Nora Robert’s 437th book will still be dry.

Roll top closure: easy in, easy out, with a notgunnabreak brass clasp. Roll tops are the best for keeping water out too. No zippers to fail. Zippers are bad. The waterproof ones so many bags come with wear out: there’s a sort of plasticy rubber seal that goes over the zipper that wears out in time. Our bag, with the occasional rewax, will be weatherproof for as long as you care to own it.

US made fabric, but even cooler, US made bag. Not in a small factory, but by one guy, in a cabin, in the woods of Maine, living off the grid and using a treadle (that’s foot power) sewing machine to build these bags. He built his cabin too, and I reckon if he can build a cabin that sustains him deep in the cold woods of Maine, he probably knows a thing or two about making things properly.

We designed the bag, and the bag builder, Scott, argued with us endlessly. He wanted as much superfluous stuff removed from the bag as possible. More weatherproof, less seams to fail. This iteration is the 4th one, but we reckon Scott nailed it.

Side loops with brass snaps so you can snap it onto the basket. There’s another loop coming off the snap loop, so you can run a strap thru there and make it a shoulder bag.

Secure with the side loops for town use or light loads.  Put a strap over the top for rowdy riding.

Works with the Wald full medium 137 basket or the 137 half baske, as the strap attaches to the middle rail of the medium basket and the top rail of the half.  

The bag is big n’ tall. Roll it down if you don’t need that much height. No internal pockets. That’s what little stuff sacks are for. Internal pockets mean more seams, which means more places for water to maybe get in.