photo: Kristen Croasmun prepares for her hip-hop dance performance.

by Dallan Wright

While visiting the Lagoon theme park in Farmington, Utah I made an interesting discovery. The Fanny Pack is still alive and kicking. I thought fanny pack mania died back in the early 90’s, as did Wikipedia, but apparently an underground rebel group of fanny packers still exist and expose themselves at places like theme parks and state fairs.

This experience reminded me of the late eighties in Rexburg when a company called Ultimate Direction took the sports pack world by storm with their innovative designs centered around hydration and the water bottle. Before runners, bikers, and kayakers latched onto Camel Back drinking bladders, the world was ruled by water bottle’s supported by waist packs.

My mother, Jan Wright, worked many years for Ultimate Direction sewing packs together, and over that time I became very familiar with their models and style.

I do admit my favorite pack to wear was the temperature changing fanny pack. I’m not positive this was an actual selling model, or if my mother made it just for me, but this was a fanny pack that not only looked cool dangling just below the gut line, but when the temperature turned cold you could touch the neon fabric and a different bright neon color would appear. I’m sure it was NASA inspired technology.

Unfortunately Ultimate Direction hasn’t survived to the level of a company like North Face and was eventually sold to Sierra Designs in 1999.  Ultimate currently resides in Boulder Colorado, but for a while there in the late eighties and early nineties Rexburg was at the center of the outdoor sports pack world.  Remember that as you pass by the guy pulling Red Bull from his fanny pack.