Tourist in MSN

I used to use a Surly front rack, that allowed setting the panniers at different heights and I tried the different heights to experiment. I concluded that as long as your load is reasonable for a typical pair of front panniers that usually are in the 25 liter range for the pair, raising panniers several inches will not impact handling that much. It was noticeable, but not problematic.

I once scrapped the bottom of a pannier on a curb, I heard the sound but the contact was minimal so it did not upset my steering, but once was enough, I give curbs a lot of clearance when I am using a low rider rack.

I have had more problems with eroded narrow trails that are deeper than the surrounding ground, in cases like that sometimes you are riding in a trough that is not much wider than the pedals and if he pedal catches the side of the trough, that can really slow you down and upset your balance while you try to recover. And pedals are usually lower than panniers that are hung from a low rider rack. Example in the photo below, you can see how narrow the trail was and occasionally the trail was deep enough that I would catch a pedal on the side of the trough I was in. I did not have panniers on the bike, but I think the panniers would have been high enough to clear it where the pedals did not.

If you are in an area where there are occasional rocks that you have to worry about snagging on a pannier, I am sure you would be riding really slow and giving everything a lot of clearance.





I do not know how high you are thinking of mounting the panniers, but on my expedition bike I have the panniers mounted above the mid-fork rack mounts, you can see that the pannier hook rail is quite a bit higher than the fork rack mount.




That does not impair my handling to a degree that I would have difficulty. Bottom of the pannier is near the axle, I have a lot of ground clearance.