Old Man Mountain Hemlock packs with FLiP Cages

The Old Man Mountain Hemlock packs with FLiP cages represent a new sub-category for carrying stuff on bikes. For people who don’t want traditional panniers, or pannier racks messing up their bike when not touring, or who want to effortlessly swap between a drybag pannier and cage-based carrying, the Hemlock FLiP ecosystem could be a great solution.

Oregon’s Old Man Mountain isn’t the first brand to have a crack at reinventing luggage carrying on a bike. UK brand Tailfin introduced its drybag-style luggage with a proprietary quick-locking system years back, and quickly gained an enviable reputation for solid, silent, waterproof performance. Tailfin’s bags lock onto their own design of mounts that come on their racks or as ‘T-adaptors’ that can be bolted to fork or rack 64mm-spaced inserts. Ortlieb, meanwhile, was first to the ‘fork pack/drybag’ party in 2020, and its offering uses proprietary mounts, as Tailfin’s does.

As most gravel and touring bikes now come with three mounts as standard, each side of the fork, and many racks follow suit, we are well into a new era of cage-mount luggage systems. Old Man Mountain steps this up with its FLiP interface, which it has licensed to other luggage manufacturers. At the time of writing, at least five bikepacking bag brands use the system, giving a fair amount of choice now and into the future.

FLiP stands for ‘Fast Lock in Place’ – and it does exactly that. The system is in two halves: the cage itself, which has an optional foot that can be bolted on for carrying heavier cylindrical loads like water or fuel bottles – and then the locking mechanism built into the bag, which comprises two hooks at the bottom, then a turning lock at the top.

The lock is basically a giant tab that slots into the top of the cage, and which is then rotated by a chunky lever either forward or back to secure the bag. There’s enough friction in the interface and pivot that there’s no way it’s vibrating loose – it would need to overcome gravity for one thing to pivot back upright.

It takes far longer to type than to do, and the chunky size of the hooks and tab itself make it easy to get everything in place. I thought Tailfin bags were the fastest to add or remove from a rack or mount, but Old Man Mountain may have invented something a smidge faster. This matters most in situations where you need to quickly add or remove bags, like at train/bus stations or airports where you don’t want to be faffing with Voile straps or buckles while the doors or your check-in are about to close. The FLiP mechanism removes all doubt and need for experience. You just angle the base hooks, straighten up and turn the big tab – done.

The cages are a thick grey injection-moulded glass-reinforced nylon with rounded edges. There are two slots for passing straps through, and the third mount doubles to hold the foot in place if needed – it can be swapped on or off with only the lower screw needing removal. They’re pretty darn light at 94g a side, with the foot adding another 46g.

The Hemlock bags are also light at 350g for the 7L model – which given how easy they are to use and how tough they are, is quite something. The 5L Tailfin + mount system weight basically the same as the Old Man Mountain 5L Hemlock plus FLiP cage – so if you were looking for weight as a decision-maker, you’re out of luck. The Tailfin ‘Fork Pack’ T-mounts are certainly low-profile, if looks matter – but then they can’t be used to carry anything else, like a water bottle, when not being used to carry a pannier.

The Hemlock bags come in 5L or 7L options, both using the same mount. They are basically seam-welded drybags that happen to have a bike mounting system baked in. The lower section and back of the Hemlock is Hypalon, a crazy-tough material seen all over the bikepacking industry. I see absolutely no reason you couldn’t use a Hemlock to tote water to camp of an evening or morning, once it was empty.

The design and branding is minimal and nicely done.

The one thing I’d like to see Old Man Mountain add to the Hemlock is an air release valve. That would allow you to squeeze every last bit of air out once you’ve rolled the top closed. This would help remove the slight distraction of movement of the top of the bag. As the whole Hemlock-FLiP system is plastic, it lacks the solid rigidity of metal-on-metal systems, like Tailfin. When riding along, you can see out of the corner of your eye a slight wobble in the bag. I never felt like it was loose – it’s not – but this may disconcert some riders. Yes, you could add straps around the Hemlock, but that would kind of negate the purpose of it being faff-free.

One other drawback of the system – and this will be a biggie for some – is the height of the bag when installed. There are two reasons to want to keep panniers low at the front: to improve handling, and to remove frame strike when turning the bars. The 7L Hemlocks sat high enough that I couldn’t turn my bars more than 45 degrees either way – something that’s not an issue when riding at speed, but occasionally you want to manoeuvre your bike in a tight space. On the other hand, having the bottom of the Hemlock well above axle height greatly improves trailside clearance.

On trips around Highland Perthshire’s trails, the Hemlock performed as expected – totally quiet and solid, even fully loaded to the 4-ish kilogram maximum weight. As mentioned, the tops wobble a bit, but I got over that quickly. If you were mounting the bags on a rear rack, obviously this won’t even be an issue.

The FLiP cages are £80 a pair, while the Hemlock bags, including cages, are £185 for the 7L set or £165 for the 5L set.

Two Tailfin 5L Fork packs will set you back £160 including mounts, so if you don’t care for cages, that makes more fiscal sense – but you can’t use the Tailfin mounts for anything else. If you go the Old Man Mountain Hemlock route, you effectively get cages with removable feet for free, which may swing it.

Ortlieb’s highly-regarded Fork Pack is £130 for a pair of the 5.8L version, but like Tailfin the mount is proprietary and can’t be used for anything else.

All three systems – Old Man Mountain, Tailfin and Ortlieb – have strong reputations. The choice really comes down to the ecosystem you want to buy into, and whether the functionality of traditional cage design – with or without a foot – is your bag, baby.

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