What are hiking backpacks made of?

Hiking backpacks are built primarily from three fabric families: standard nylon, Cordura nylon, and Dyneema Composite Fabric (DCF), each trading off weight, cost, and durability differently.

Standard nylon

Standard nylon (usually nylon 6 or nylon 6,6) is a woven synthetic fiber and the default material across most mainstream pack brands. It's typically reinforced with a ripstop grid — a thicker thread woven in every few millimeters to stop small tears from spreading — and coated on the inside with polyurethane (PU) or silicone for water resistance. Nylon is the most affordable and widely available pack fabric, and decades of refinement mean most reputable nylon packs perform reliably for years of regular use.

Cordura

Cordura is a branded family of abrasion-resistant fabrics, most commonly nylon 6,6, engineered with higher-tenacity yarns and denser weaves than generic nylon at the same weight. It's used either across an entire pack body or selectively on high-wear zones like the bottom panel and lower sides, where friction against rock and gear concentrates. Cordura shares nylon's basic water behavior — both fibers absorb a small amount of moisture and depend on a coating for rain resistance — but resists fuzzing, thread-breakage, and pilling better under repeated abrasion.

Dyneema Composite Fabric (DCF)

DCF, formerly sold as Cuben Fiber, is a laminate rather than a woven textile: a grid of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene fibers sandwiched between polyester film layers. It's the lightest of the three fabric families, doesn't absorb water, and doesn't stretch under load, which is why ultralight brands like Hyperlite Mountain Gear and Zpacks built entire product lines around it. It costs more than nylon or Cordura and is more vulnerable to sharp punctures, since its laminate structure doesn't contain a small cut the way a woven fabric's crossing threads can.

Other fabrics worth knowing

X-Pac and hybrid woven-Dyneema fabrics (sold under names like Ultra) sit between these categories — laminate or hybrid constructions aimed at combining some of nylon's sewability with some of DCF's weight and water-resistance advantages. These show up increasingly on newer pack models as manufacturers look for a middle ground between the three main fabric families.