Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest with Crux® 2L Reservoir

Review by Erin Trail

The Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest with Crux® 2L Reservoir is a smaller sized hydration pack with a women’s specific fit. The pack has a hydration capacity of 2 L (via the included Crux® 2L Reservoir) and a gear capacity of 6 L, giving riders plenty of room for everything they’d need on a mountain bike ride.

This hydration pack has plenty of storage options to meet the needs of nearly every rider:

• Two front top-zipping expandable pockets (on the front strap, left and right), large enough to fit snacks or a phone.
• Two rear top-zipping pockets.  One pocket is toward the back and is intended to store a hydration bladder.  The other is towards the exterior and is intended to store tools or other bulky items.
• One stretch overflow pocket, for quickly stashing layers.

Additionally, the Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest comes with the additional features:

• Women’s Specific Fit: The vest utilizes body mapping technology for a tailored fit and enhanced cooling. S-curved shoulder harness is contoured to fit a woman’s body for added comfort and stability.
• Breathable 3D Grid Mesh Harness.
• Dual Adjustable Sternum Straps.

The pack is will also hold Camelbak’s Impact Protector, for those who want additional spine protection.

Detailed Review

I’m a 5’4″ female and was looking for a lighter, smaller volume hydration pack for shorter rides or to wear during races. This pack is a bit too much for shorter cross-country races (under 3 hours), but I do think it would be a great option for longer rides or races because of the storage. I liked the front pockets for snack storage.  They unzipped easily for quick access to snacks while riding but were a little tricky to zip back up while moving.  The pocket also fit my phone (Samsung 23) while fully zipped.  I did forget to re-zip the pocket up after a short navigation stop.  The pocket looks like it will securely hold a phone while riding, but unfortunately, my phone fell out of the front pack pocket on the trail. (I was lucky that another rider called it out and that we were close to where it fell).

I liked the options in the main, rear compartment of the Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest.  The hydration bladder fits securely without bouncing.  The outer pocket has an integrated tool organization system, with purposeful places to store CO2, tools and a bike pump.

The fit of the Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest is good.  The front sternum straps are elastic and slide vertically along the chest straps, ensuring a fit that works with the rider’s anatomy.  There are also cinch straps on the sides of the vest, allowing for a variety of torso thicknesses and fit preferences.  Camelbak does say that the pack fits just above a rider’s cycling jersey (so they have easy access to jersey pockets).  I found that the pack was on the long side, hitting the waist of my shorts.

Once on and loaded, the Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest feels good while riding.  The pack didn’t bounce, and except for my poor phone, the contents inside the pack didn’t shift around.

My main complaint is the design of the hydration bladder hose attachment to the pack straps.  The hose of the Crux® 2L Reservoir is fairly stiff and tends to kink instead of bend if you pull it at a sharp angle (like to drink).  The Camelbak Women’s Chase™ Adventure 8 Hydration Vest has 2 bladder hose u-shaped friction connectors along the right of the front straps that are open to the centerline of the rider’s body.  Due to the stiffness of the bladder hose and the orientation of the connectors, when I pulled on the hose to take a drink, I either kinked the hose (preventing fluid reaching my mouth) or completely dislodged the hose from the connectors. This seems like a bad design, and as an engineer, I couldn’t think of a way to make the issue better without redesigning either the hose (to be more flexible) or to redesign the shape and orientation of the hose clips. As I grabbed the hose, it usually freed itself of the clips, and I’d have to try and figure out how to guide the hose back into the clips as I rode.  This is a bit dangerous and after a while, I just ignored the strap clips completely and tucked the hose inside the top elastic sternum strap.  I think if Camelbak had used magnets or different connection design, this would be a non-issue, but the way it is now, it’s a borderline dealbreaker because of the annoyance and possible safety issue (a rider shouldn’t be distracted by their pack as they ride).

Closing Thoughts

The Camelbak Women’s Chase Adventure 8 Hydration Vest is a good, but not great option for a smaller mountain bike hydration pack.  The storage options are great: they are purpose built to hold a wide variety of things, from hydration to tools to snacks.  The fit is highly customizable and comfortable, allowing options to fit a wide range of bodies.  My only complaint is the way that the hydration hose connects to the pack. It’s clunky and doesn’t work well to the point where I became so annoyed and stopped connecting the hose to the pack as designed.  This hydration pack would be a good option for women wanting a smaller sized hydration pack that has plenty of options for storage.

Erin Trail

Erin Trail’s hobby is collecting hobbies. She’s a 5th Generation Coloradan and grew up exploring the outdoors on family camping trips and hikes.  Her first backpacking trip was at eight years old to Grizzly Reservoir – she proudly carried all of her own gear those 3 miles from the main parking lot to the Reservoir.

Erin is an adult-onset athlete who started as a Masters Swimmer and then developed into a triathlete.  She completed 5 Ironman races and nearly 20 x 70.3 distance Ironman races, including the World Championship in Lahti, Finland, in 2023.  Somewhere along her triathlon journey, she picked up a deep love of cycling.

Cycling encouraged her to see landscapes in a new way, learn new skills and to develop self reliance; now she often goes and does Type 2 rides just to see if she can do it.  She’s got all the bikes: gravel, mountain, fat bike, time trial and road.

She is even known to combine her love of camping and cycling and go off on solo 24 hour overnight bikepacking trips in the mountains of Colorado. In addition to bikes, she teaches yoga, lifts weights, skis, SUPs and has recently purchased a campervan.

Erin is a former Montana park ranger with a degree in environmental engineering.  She loves getting into technical details while putting her gear (and herself) through the paces. She shares her home in Colorado with her husband, Will, and her 3 cats (Zipper, Brewtus, and Simcoe).

2025 brings some exciting things.  Erin has qualified to be on Team USA for USA Triathlon and will be competing in a World Championship off-road triathlon in Pontevedra, Spain in June. To prepare for this event, she’s got several mountain bike races and training weekends planned in the months leading up to the big day.  Additionally, she’s racing Ironman Boise 70.3 in July.  Once her race schedule closes out in July, she’ll be moving to more adventure based activities (bikepacking, vanlife, and mountain bike festivals).

When not adventuring, she can be found on a sunny patio somewhere, drinking beers with her husband.