I have an osprey aether 60 which I bought in ~2005 or maybe early 2006. It is a great pack, and I have used it for a bunch of snowcamping and mountaineering trips.

(mine is actually orange )


But after cervical fusion surgery I have two places ("donor sites") in my hip where they took bone out to graft into my neck. The front site in my iliac crest (I think this is what it's called) is quite literally shaped like a notch, and the hip belt of my beloved aether cuts into it somewhat painfully after a couple of days.

I've been just toughing it out for the last couple of years. I was sure this would go away after a while -- someone told me the bone would grow back, but that doesn't seem to be the happening, or at least not as fast as I would like It's not a huge deal unless the trip is longer than a weekend. Anybody else have this problem ?

I had the same surgery a few years back after a bad water skiing fall (C5/C6 fusion). I used a foam "donut" under the pack's hip belt to keep the pressure off the scar until it healed.

I climbed Shasta two months after sugery -- the donut worked great.

Hope this helps.

I had a bone tumor removed from one of my hips about 30 years ago. The problem isn't the bone though, it is the lack of muscle and such covering it. In order to get access to the bone, they had to remove part of the muscle from it at the point of attachment. At that time they didn't have any technique to reattach the muscle in the same location, so they attached it to the adjacent muscle. This left one area a bit fat from extra muscle and a place next to it where there is only skin covering the wing of the hip bone. Hip belts on packs don't give me any trouble unless I'm wearing a fairly stiff belt for my pants under the hip belt.

Glad you all survived your individual ordeals. I used my aether to do Lassen and Shasta about 7-8 months after my surgery. It was kind of painful, but the donor sites got less tender over time.

I have a number of other packs (Kris is gonna start laughing at this I know ) which don't bother the notch in my hip as much, but don't fill the niche my aether does.

The foam idea sounds like a good thing to try .. maybe molefoam .. usually if I wear plastic boots I put moleskin on my shins for similar reasons. I'll have to experiment with that.

If you can find it, you probably want to explore using evazote foam. It's got the best compression set resistance of any affordable closed cell foam and comes in a variety of densities and widths.

good luck!