The North Face Base Camp Gear Box review: rugged, spacious, and built to last
Massive, durable and thoughtfully designed, The North Face Base Camp Gear Box is an outstanding bit of kit storage — ideal for vanlifers, weekend warriors, and anyone with a growing mountain of outdoor gear.
The North Face Base Camp Gear Box
Ideal for: Travel, hauling gear, short walks, van life
Not suitable for: Hiking, backpacking, mountaineering, fastpacking
The North Face Base Camp Gear Box is a 90-litre soft-sided storage container made for people who take their kit seriously. With a rigid fold-out structure, multiple organisation pockets, and ultra-tough Base Camp fabric, it’s built to handle everything from garage storage to overland missions. At 2.5kg, it’s not lightweight — but then again, it’s not meant to be. Priced at £135, it offers excellent value for money in a market where quality gear haulers often run much steeper. If you’ve got axes, crampons, sleeping bags, tents and head torches strewn across your boot room or boot — this’ll sort you out.
The Good
Ultra‑durable build
Rigid structure
Clear window
Great organisation
Huge capacity
Strong value
The Bad
Can be awkward to carry if heavy
The North Face Base Camp Gear Box review
If you’ve ever googled “bombproof duffel bag”, chances are you’ve seen The North Face pop up. The Californian brand has become a household name in outdoor gear — first for its down jackets and mountain-ready apparel, and later for its near-indestructible luggage. The Base Camp series, in particular, has built a cult following among climbers, expedition crews, vanlifers and weekend adventurers alike — and the Base Camp Gear Box is a natural evolution of that legacy.
This 90-litre storage unit isn’t a pack or a bag — it’s a box. But it’s a box you can lug around, load into a car boot, or take on a plane. Made with the same burly Base Camp material that’s helped keep duffels alive from Denali to Dartmoor, this is a purpose-built hauler for keeping your kit in order — at home, on the road, or at basecamp. It’s top-loading, stackable, reinforced with metal kickstands, and thoughtfully organised. Weight comes in around 2.5kg, but unless you’re flying and pushing baggage limits, it doesn’t really matter. RRP at time of writing is £135.
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In a world of heavy-duty gear haulers, this sits at an interesting crossroads. It’s more affordable than overlanding-specific solutions like the Rux 70L, which costs substantially more but integrates with a whole modular ecosystem. It’s also more structured and stash-friendly than something like the TNF Base Camp Duffel XL, which arguably carries better but stores worse. And compared to Gregory’s Alpaca Gear Box 45L, it offers double the volume in a package that’s just as useful in a loft as it is in a Land Rover. For those reasons, we think it’s a brilliant option — especially for people with a lot of kit and nowhere tidy to keep it.
How we tested the Base Camp Gear Box
We tested this storage box over several months of classic British adventuring. It lived in the back of our car, ferrying gear to and from wild camps across the UK — from misty mornings in the Lakes to windy evenings on the Gower. It became our go-to box for mailing review gear between Great British Adventure Club members, and even took up residence in our gear cupboard between trips. While this isn’t the kind of product you “take on the hill”, it quickly became an indispensable part of our setup — especially when moving with large volumes of kit.
Features that make a difference
Let’s start with the obvious: this thing is tough. Built from the same material as The North Face’s legendary duffels, the Base Camp Gear Box is rugged enough to take a beating — whether that’s being chucked into the back of a van or living under piles of wet gear in a garage. The fabric shrugs off abrasions, spills, grit, and the odd crampon spike like it was made for the abuse. Which, of course, it was.
Where it really shines, though, is in structure. Inside are two clever metal kickstands that fold out to make the box rigid when in use — no saggy walls or floppy corners to deal with — then fold back in when you want to stash it flat. It’s this pop-up, pack-down design that makes it so handy for vanlifers and anyone with limited space at home.
There’s more organisation here than you’d expect too. Four mesh internal pockets keep smaller bits and bobs separate — ideal for stashing stove parts, gloves, headtorches, or any of the usual kit that disappears just when you need it. Up top, there’s a secure zipped lid pocket, while two external sleeves offer extra stash spots for maps, trail snacks, or climbing tape. The cherry on top? A clear window on the side — perfect for quickly identifying what’s inside without having to unzip or rummage.
Comfort-wise, you get both duffel-style and side carry handles. That said, you won’t be walking far with it fully loaded. The shape is boxy and a bit awkward to carry long distance, but that’s not really the point — it’s for moving from garage to car, or car to tent, not hiking across Dartmoor.
On the outside, a daisy-chain webbing system on the lid adds even more flexibility — useful for lashing it down, or strapping on extras. And the 90-litre capacity? Huge. Genuinely, you can fit a full camping sleep system, a climbing rack, waterproofs, boots and more in here without having to play tetris.
How it handled real UK adventures
Across every trip we used it on — and every boot, loft, or gear room it sat in — the Base Camp Gear Box proved itself endlessly useful. We used it to separate clean kit from muddy kit, to stash sensitive items away from the elements, and to keep our most important gear ready to go in one place. It was equally at home stacked in a garage as it was stuffed in the back of a car.
Even when loaded up with 20+ kg of gear, it held its shape, carried fine over short distances, and didn’t show any signs of stress. After several months of near-constant use, it still looks almost new — which is more than we can say for most of our other storage bins. The clear window was a game changer on busy days, and the internal pockets meant less rummaging around trying to remember where you put your Jetboil.
The North Face Base Camp Duffel FAQs
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Very. It’s made from the same Base Camp material as The North Face’s expedition duffels — which are known for lasting decades. It shrugs off scuffs, resists moisture, and handles heavy use brilliantly. We’ve stuffed it full, dragged it in and out of cars, and chucked it in muddy fields — it hasn’t flinched.
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Extremely easy. The internal structure pops into place via two metal kickstands, giving you a rigid box when you need it and a collapsible one when you don’t. Multiple mesh pockets, a zippered lid pocket, external sleeves and a clear window make organisation dead simple. It’s genuinely very well thought out.
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It holds 90 litres — so quite a lot. You can easily pack a full wild camping setup, climbing gear, cold weather layers and more into a single box. It’s big enough to become your go-to adventure kit trunk, but not so big that it’s unwieldy.
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Yes — we think so. At £135, it’s cheaper than many high-end duffels but better suited to stationary storage and overlanding-style use. If you need a tough, tidy way to keep your gear organised and ready to go, this is an excellent investment.
The North Face Base Camp Gear Box: our verdict
Is it perfect? Not quite. You wouldn’t want to carry it far. And if you’re flying with it, the shape is more awkward than a duffel. But for the vast majority of UK-based outdoor folk, this is a near-ideal storage solution. It’s big enough to hold almost all your essential kit. It’s burly enough to last for years. It’s neat and structured enough to keep everything organised — and it looks pretty damn good too.
We think it’s a brilliant choice for vanlifers, overlanders, climbers, mountaineers, or just anyone looking for a smarter way to store their gear between trips. And at £135, it’s a solid deal.
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