If you're looking for a durable outdoors hat, you will not regret spending $100+ on an Akubra. It's a far superior value to any other hat you'll find for less.
Spot on. You can replace those $25-30 hats every couple of years and end up spending far more, or buy an Akubra and wear it for the rest of your life. In the long run, an Akubra will give you far more bang for your buck....If you go cheap you will just spend more on multiple hats.
I have 3 Acubras and they look amazing but I find them impracticable, because they are so stiff. Maybe they're hardwearing but you can't stuff them in a pocket in your jacket or backpack. I am thinking of buying a Stetson Merced. Its crushable but also so soft that its very comfortable to wear, where an Acubra doesn't adapt so well to your headshape.
You could try the Akubra Travellor which I believe is designed to be crushable..
Does it not have a reed?Yes,the "traveler"is crushable.
Just my two cents, but I have some reservations about felt hats for this sort of thing.
I've got a lot of Akubras.. maybe 7 or 8 now. Four Campdrafts. I also have a number of other felt hats, and I've spent a lot of time on the trails backpacking with hats, though that was before I owned any Akubras.
The big problem for me is overheating. Heading uphill you heat up VERY fast, and if you don't take that hat off you're going to be pouring sweat and then be in heatstroke territory pretty quick, even when it's pretty cold out. Your body has to get rid of the heat somehow, and it's really hard to shed layers without stopping and a lot of fuss when you're wearing a pack or have a rifle slung, that only leaves your head. Felt hats are just hot, especially when it's humid as well.
So, you take it off.. now what do you do with it? Having a stampede string or similar cord doesn't really help if you're wearing a pack, there's nowhere for it to go, and with some pack rigs or rifle slings it can get tangled up and ruin more than your day.
As much as I love felt hats, as much as I prefer them for daily wear, when I'm heading out on foot and I know I'm going to be working hard at it at some point, or when I need to pack a functional hat in a suitcase for a trip, or store one for emergencies (as I do in my motorcycle), I reach for a Tilley. I've got a number of those too, most cotton canvas, but also in nylon and hemp canvas, and you just wad them in any pack, stuff bag, pack pocket or coat pocket, and aside from always being wrinkled to some degree they just don't care. I've had the crowns of even some pretty expensive felt hats develop holes after only three or four accidental crushings, just from being sat on in a car or having people back into me in an elevator when it was in my hands, that sort of thing, and although I do have a Borsalino traveler that is supposed to be crushable I just don't have that much confidence in it, and don't really like it better than the Tilleys anyway. They have their own drawbacks and their own lore to learn, but they work.
I think the heat factor is largely mind over matter. The idea that the head area significantly looses heat or gains heat was debunked by the British Medical Journal some years back; the myth originated in a US army training manual from the 1970's. Akubrahs were designed here to be worn all day in 115 degree heat. I have done so for years without problems.