staehpj1

I met a young couple on their honeymoon riding down the Pacific Coast. They were suffering badly and asked for advice. At their request I went over their gear with them. In order to get down to normal touring standards they needed to drop 50 or more pounds of stuff each. They just had so much heavy stuff. One of my favorite items was a bike tool kit in a big plastic case. It had all of the shop tools to maintain most different models of bikes. A lot of the tools didn't even fit anything on their particular bikes. It probably weighed 10 pounds. That was just one of many items.

I once had a warm showers guest that was going to stay with us. He was hours late arriving and the weather turned horrendous. We were in contact by phone so I offered to pick him up. He was still quite a few hours away at the pace he was riding and the rain was torrential. His mother had contacted us and asked us to please look out for him. Any way I picked him up and his bike and gear must have weighed at least 200 pounds. He didn't seem interested in advice so I didn't push any on him. He had made it from New York to Maryland when he stayed with us and eventually made it to Florida and I heard a rumor he made it to Texas. He was headed for the west coast. He had a rear basket and gear was stacked on that and laced with rope and chain to shoulder height or so. If the time he was making when he was headed to my house was any indication he may as well have just hiked other than he couldn't have taken all that stuff while hiking.

He made it a long way though so I give him a lot of credit. Other guests that have stayed with us who were way over loaded typically either bailed on their trips pretty quickly of dumped a lot of gear in the cases where I knew what happened.

andrewclaus

Very wise. Unsolicited advice only benefits the person giving it.

balto charlie

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Water resupply in southern Utah is near impossible. Some folks stage water along some routes. I am in your court, mule days are long gone. I always try to camp near streams. NE, NW and Mid-Atlantic areas are great for back country and filtering H2O. Like you, the lighter I am the longer I can go.

balto charlie

My sawyer is like yours not the small one. When I canoe camp or backpack near lakes and rivers I filter like you. Only when I bikepack or tour do I use the squeeze method. Squeeze doesn't use much muscle, in fact gentle squeeze works best for me. Plus I relish being off the bike and sitting by a stream.

balto charlie

So you drink only 2 L of water a day, plus cooking water. I drink so much more. I do tend to sweat easily and get my share of cramps so I drink a lot more. I drink 1-2 L before coffee in the morning! Even when I am home. I think it safe to say I drink between 1.5-2 gallons of water a day. I can drink almost that much on a hot century ride w/out touring. This is not criticism just an observation. Maybe I drink too much.

staehpj1

Not saying that is necessarily too much, but do you get blood work done regularly? You could be at risk of hyponatremia, If you do have it it can be quite dangerous. Drinking too much can be a cause or a symptom, maybe both, not sure. Someone I know who drank a similar amount of water had their blood work turn up a problem before it was too bad. I have heard of deaths though.

balto charlie

After posting my last comment I did a google search on how much water to drink. Mayo clinic says men should drink a gallon a day and this did not take into account heavy exercising. So my 1.5 gallons is not too out of line with Mayo. I think I will start measuring my intake out of curiousity. I have read (not today) that one should drink a lot when you wake up due to natural dehydration while sleeping.

Tourist in MSN

I called it 20 minutes, as a through hiker that I had unclogged his filter for him and I went to the creek from the campsite together. I filled my 2 liter unfiltered bladder while he started squeezing his bladder. I went back to the campsite and set up the gravity system, then started doing some other kitchen duties. It was about 20 minutes later that I was dis-assembling my gravity system after it had already filtered the 2 liters when the other guy came back. His filter was not doing well, I did the best I could to unclog it, but it was slow. And perhaps he drank some of the water to rehydrate before he then needed to filter some more?

Tourist in MSN

My numbers are for my backpacking trip last summer near the north shore of Lake Superior in early September. Average lows in high 40s, average highs in mid 60s range. I try not to travel where it is uncomfortably hot. Yeah I sweated, but not excessively.
herspark.com/s/146378/2/Average-Fall-Weather-at-Grand-Marais-Cook-County-Airport-Minnesota-United-States#Figures-Temp

If you have 1 to 2 liters of water in the morning before your morning coffee, yeah I think that is too much. Be careful you do not drink it too fast, you could get hyponatremia. If you do not know what that is, look it up. If you drink too much fluid too fast, you could dilute the salts in your system too much.

GhostRider62

I'm shocked how many I have seen who do not filter, it takes me 30 seconds to squeeze a bottle. Not so surprising that few filter and treat but it is difficult to guess if viruses smaller than the filter membrane pores are present. What gear to bring depends on the circumstances and context. The thought and risk analysis should be independent of weight. For instance, the additional weight of natural fabrics (merino, alpacca or Yak) are worth it to me compared to synthetics. OTOH, in warmer temperatures I have no use for a stove and cooking gear but in colder/wet climates, I bring a small setup. What I find objectionable are the judgemental people who think they know better because I don't have three stoves, four cook pots and my headlamp isn't to their liking.

Cutting weight is probably the easiest thing to do (unless it is off my gut)

imi

I’m not a big guy 5’8”, 150 lbs, but I lose weight on tour regardless of how much I eat. Typically, up to 10 lbs in a couple of months. Impossible to say if it’s the weight loss, stronger legs, or overall stamina, but I do get faster 😬

balto charlie

My bad, I drink 2 pints of water when I wake up. one immediately and 1 while I drink my coffee, but I do drink a gallon or more during the day.

andrewclaus

For most bike touring, I don't even consider carrying a filter. It's needed so seldom. I carry Aquamira drops, a chlorine dioxide two-part system that's somewhat popular on the long trails. No moving parts, nothing to clog, no hoses. A set of bottles weighs 3 oz, costs $15, and will treat 30 gallons. It takes 5 minutes to mix chemicals, 15 more minutes to drink. It tastes better than most municipal water.

I will selectively drink natural water, but seldom on a bike tour or anywhere near a road. The exception is on high alpine roads, above treeline, when I can see run-off from snowfields. On my Northern Tier ride, I collected rain water running off roadside cliffs in North Cascades National Park.

indyfabz

I think I mentioned this before, but one woman in our cross country group started out with a Sony Watchman TV and an electric hair dryer. They got shipped home at the start of Day 3, before we got to the Cascades. A couple other group members shipped stuff home that morning. There was a shipping business location (forget the name of the chain) in Port Townsend, WA. We had to wait for the ferry, so they had time.

timdow

Right I have a two-week trip planned on the Pacific Coast in June, then as long as I am able to stop working as planned, intend to do the Southern Tier bike tour and some or all of the PCT (hiking trail) in 2024-2025. The timing of the trips is dependent upon conditions for hiking the PCT - I am glad I am not going this year due to the high snow pack (and the ensuing snow melt)!

I carried a Sawyer Squeeze Mini when I did a two week bike tour on the Divide in Colorado, which worked just fine but of course it was a short trip with a new filter. I am intending to either use a regular Sawyer Squeeze or the Katadyn BeFree for the PCT.

mev

As far as water goes, for me it mostly depends on weather. When I was cycling around Australia (highs in low 30s Celsius, 86-95F and lows around 20), the guideline I used was 1 liter per 20km and 2 liters overnight. I stayed less than that but it was also a safe guideline for me when water stops were further apart.

Longest gap I had w/o confirmed water was 280km between Roebuck and Sandfire roadhouse in the Great Sandy Desert. As it turned out, I had people offer me water, both stopped along the road and where I camped so the 16 liters I started with was overkill. However, I routinely carried 5 to 8 liters while traveling. There was little surface water but people had documented the water stops (though occasionally a tank was dry or was suspect).

I've followed a similar guideline in later trips across areas w/o much water such as western Argentina. Water is heavy so you don't want to carry too much and I like having a filter both for natural sources and for more urban areas where water treatment might be suspect.

Tourist in MSN

I have met some backpackers that complained about their Sawyer water filters (besides the one through hiker I described above), and every one I asked when was the last time they backflushed it. And the answer was often never or many dozens or hundreds of liters ago.

I always backflush my Sawyer with a very quick and not very robust backflush every time I use it. Backpacking, I carry the syringe, but for the quick backflush that I typically do it only takes seconds with the right kind of water bottle lid instead of syringe.

I usually carry a Smartwater brand water bottle or another bottle with a similar cap on it. You can easily hold the filter exit tube against that type of water bottle lid. That works well to do a quick bottle squeeze to push maybe an ounce or two of water through it in a quick backflush.



Note the arrow that is printed on the filter above aims towards the bottle, when you back flush it you are pushing water out the inlet to push particulates back out.

I think that frequent backflushing can prevent a lot of problems. And it only takes seconds. If you have a bottle with that kind of cap, try it out at home first so you know how easier it is.

My filter also seems to work best if I do a robust backflush with the syringe before I put it in storage and again after I take it out of storage before a trip.

Yan 

Water requirement is temperature and humidity dependent. You don't sweat when it's cold. You lose less water through your lungs when it's humid. I rode a century in cold rain yesterday and only drank 1.5 L of water the entire ride, about 0.4 gallon.

I tour with a 10L MSR Dromedary bag. Fill it up in the evening from gas stations, use it at the campsite and to fill my bottles the next morning, dump out the excess at the start of the ride. If I have a long ride without water access, I use it to carry drinking water. But water is heavy and it sucks.

tcs

"I had yet to see an American tourist who did not almost ruin his trip by overloading himself with unnecessary baggage." - Fred Birchmore, around the world 1935, single-speed Original Reinhardt bicycle

Tourist in MSN

I suspect you know this already, but just in case you don't, most filters do not filter out viruses.

Dangerous viruses in the wilderness are quite rare, our bodies have had thousands of generations to learn how to fight any natural viruses that are ingested. But if you are in a less developed country that might not have safe chlorinated water supplies, dangerous viruses could be present in the water supply. In those cases, a Steripen, Iodine tablets or a few drops of Chlorine Bleach may be a good thing to add to your water after you filter it. And you could say the same thing about any natural water supplies near any large cattle operations anywhere.

I carry a one ounce squeeze bottle of Chlorine bleach with my filter for any such occurrences. I almost never use it but in the situations where I did, I thought nothing about it later. And since the bleach in my bottle might be several years old, I am inclined to double that to four drops per liter.
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and...drinking-water

EPA changed their guidance several years ago (maybe a decade ago?), they increased it to 2 drops per liter for Chlorine.

If Cryptosporidium is around, do not rely only on chemical treatment, filtering or boiling would be necessary. And if in an area with a lot of Moose, same thing, only boiling or filtering can be relied on.

More on the moose issues here:
https://www.nps.gov/isro/planyourvis...king-water.htm

mev

Yes, I also took some treatment tablets to use, though I also tried to avoid taking them for extended periods. Also some natural sources might have various heavy metals, etc.

In general, my unscientific approach when I was out for multiple months such as the five months it took to cross Russia was:
- If the locals drank the water, I would as well. Typically at end of the day we would do what I called our "water ritual". We would stop at a point of habitation, e.g. small village or house or... and ask where they got water. The results were varied. Sometimes they would direct us to a well or pump house. Sometimes they would disappear into their residence and return with our 10 liter water bladder filled. After that we'd cycle another 10km or so and wild camp and use water for cooking, cleaning, drinking, etc. I usually didn't treat this water.
- Only a few spots w/o and habitation we'd find surface water. Ideally flowing and with life. Almost all the time we'd treat the water that wasn't boiled in cooking.

Hard to tell how well that worked but no major bouts of distress. Both of us did have one occasion each where something hit our GI tract but once through we were fine.

In general on a shorter trip of a week or two, I'd be more likely to treat water in addition to filtering.

nun

Your gear weight on a bike will usually be heavier than when hiking because of the tools and spares you have to carry. If you are going to be off in the wilds you won't be able to save anything on camping gear, but if you are on roads and resupply is relatively easy you might not need water filtration or much extra food and you can often use motels rather than camping. My approach is to pack a Tarptent Protrail and a 30 deg bag and a small cooking kit to keep my options open, but will usually look for a motel. Clothing is heavy so choose wisely there.

I use a Nelson Long Flap saddlebag and an Ortlieb Classic handlebar bag and have my gear and bag weight at 20lbs and the bike is around 20lbs too.

timdow

No doubt the bike luggage is heavier than a backpack. On past bike tours, I have "packed my fears," and have brought way too much clothing and food. I won't get down to your 40 lbs. with bike and gear, but my load will be substantially lighter on my next bike tour.

Doug64

There are exceptions

timdow

Nice pict! How heavy you recon that is/was?