Niles H.

Any ideas for lightening
the load while touring?

hilltowner

Take a tip from the ultralight backpacking crowd. Do a web search for equipment lists. (Go to antigravitygear.com) I use an alcohol stove and titanium pots. The whole set-up is lighter than the MSR Whisperlight stove head that I'm using the stuff bag from to contain it.

Cyclebum

The weight of panniers is not insignificant and varies a lot between brands/models. Make that a consideration when buying. Or, for ultralite, ditch panniers entirely in favor of stuff/compression sacks. They can be bungied, strapped to racks/bars/seat. Make a goal of reducing pack volume to fit gear into two front panniers and a rack pack. It is doable, even in winter, and still have room for food.

AsanaCycles

the trap is in the bags.
the bags don't weigh all that much
but its the trap of filling the bags.

seriously, do the google bit on BikePacking
and just try not using things, and source from your environment.

my last trip, Eureka to Morro Bay, I didn't even use a thermarest, simply slept on a piece of plastic (trash bag), and made due with whatever was around (leaves and grass)

prathmann

Or skip the stove/pots/fuel/other cooking gear. Plenty of cafes along the way and the rest of the time you can make do with assorted cold foods. Another thing that helps is to take clothing that's light and dries fast - that way you can minimize the amount you take by washing it and letting it dry overnight.

But I find the advantage of going ultralight to be much greater for backpacking where you have to carry every extra ounce on your own body and it affects every step you take. On a bike trip a little extra weight is really only an issue on the climbs.

znomit

Motels + credit card + small handlebar bag + large seat bag.

brooklyn_bike

i shed about 5 pounds upgrading to a lightweight two person tent and sleeping bag before my last tour. took less tools and made an effort to pack the minimum of clothes and stopped at a laundromat every few days and we chucked in all the funky stuff and washed while having lunch. my legs thanked me on some of those mountain climbs.

fietsbob

Bring more money.
stay in rented overnights, and eat in cafes.

Thulsadoom

Go on a diet.

Lasse

If you use front panniers, dump them as well as anything you can't fit in the rear panniers...

irwin7638

I end up with less than when I back pack, because I don't carry food day to day.
Here is what it looks like.

Marc

Bill in Houston

Yep. This.

MichaelW

Assuming that you want to camp out, do you need to cook food? My non-cooking camping tours have only required med rear panniers with NO luggage on the racktop.
If you need to cook, can you do the Just Add water style and use an ultralight one-pot cooking kit?
If you are travelling for longer durations, you will need 2 pots to cook what you can buy in normal village stores and some gear to prepare it. Some people can manage on one pot for long periods.
For the non-camping gear, restrict your footwear to cycling/hiking shoes for day use and sandals for evening.
Maps and guides take up a lot of room and weight.
Consider your toolkit. A threaded headset needs big wrenches, a threadless one uses an allen key. You only need a spare tyre when going way beyond bike-shop territory, otherwise a tyre boot is sufficient.

Less weight means that you need less bike to carry it. See this blog.

Aushiker

Hi

Another vote for checking out the backpacking/bushwalking approach to lightweight camping. In my view a subscription to BackpackingLight is money well spent.

I have also attempted to go lighter. My gear list can be found here for what it is worth. Might give you ideas on what not to take and where the weight is .

Andrew

AsanaCycles

I'll toss in some stuff.

so here is my Surly Big Dummy in frame bags.
also my Hunter 29er, again... frame bags.

I use a tarp for a shelter. this one happens to be a ParaTarp from Kifaru, its something like 300gms. stupid light. I carry some cordage with it, and maybe... at the most 4 MSR groundhog stakes.

for stakes I typically just use twigs. but if the ground is too hard to jam twigs into, I use a single MSR Groundhog stake to make a hole, then jam a twig into its place.

typically for protective clothing, I use a Kifaru Parka. its good to about 25F, I sleep in it, you can just lay directly on the ground.

another piece is a Kifaru Woobie... like a poncho liner, or blanket...

all this stuff compresses down real small.

thats the trick is to pick things that compress.

Patagonia Capeline long johns... they too compress down. and stay warm.

for pants, I often use a set of Endura waterproof knickers.

a stove?

sometimes I use this alcohol stove.

other times, I simply opt out of cooking.

I like Meal Pack Bars.... A LOT! in fact, I eat at 2 to 3 each day, even when I'm not touring. They are about 113gm each and give up about 440calories, something like 56gm of carbs, and uhh... maybe 30gm of protein.

another favorite of mine, is Hammer Nutrition Perpetuem.
again... its calories vs weight, and ease of consumption...

I carry at least 1 water filter, usually 2.

a Clear 2Go waterbottle filter that simply screws into the top of a standard bicycle water bottle, and I really like the Platypus gravity filter.

also I use EnduraLytes by Hammer Nutrition.

depending on the route, and what I'm trying to accomplish, typically I research places like gas stations, grocery stores, etc... and just use them as logistic stops.

another method I've done, is to mail myself stuff to a post office or hotel in advance.

there are many ways.

TheHen

This one made me laugh, mostly because it is The Truth. There are usually many pounds that should be shed prior to spending any money on gear.

I prefer to reverse this one. Shed the rear bags and use only front panniers. I find this makes for a more stable ride, especially in the hills. If you are going to ride on flat terrain with headwinds, then using only rear panniers may be a better option.

nun

Concentrate on reducing the weight of the big 4; tent, sleeping bag, pad and cooking gear.

Look at clothes, these can get heavy.

Don't bring lots of electronics, a smartphone does it all, so no camera laptops etc.

Limit yourself to 2x panniers (or saddlebag) and a handlebar bag

seeker333

Don't carry so much crap.

seeker333

Seems like a BD, weighing in at 16 pounds, is a poor choice for a "lightweight touring" frameset recommendation.

https://www.bikeman.com/FM3067.html

Switching to almost any other bike would immediately shed 10 lbs.

There are not enough lightweight frame bags in the world to ever make a BD "light".

AsanaCycles

sourcing from the environment is a very good suggestion

AsanaCycles

you'd be surprised.
the deal here is distance and calories in areas without provisions. it can easily hold 7 days of food.
and the build choice is super strong.

last year we did a tour Eureka, Ca to Ventura, Ca.
where we did about 5 days in the Sinkyone Wilderness, where we didn't come across 1 person, much less a grocery store. the route, a lot of fire road, some single track, and definitely remote. I carried a SPOT GPS transponder.

but the sentiment that a cargo bike can't be light... is pretty much right on.

when I was in the Army 7th Infantry Division, I was in a Light Artillery Air Assault unit.
how can artillery be light... doesn't seem right... right?
we were deployable anywhere in the world 24hrs wheels down. We were also only good for about 3 days unsupported.
we were deployed to Panama in '89

conversely, I think it took about 6 months to get a fighting force to Saudi for Desert Storm. (mechanized)

depending on the tour, the conditions, the route, logistics, etc...

another example, I toured around Humboldt County, Trinity, and Modoc for about 3 months into the winter.
solo touring, often times in the dirt. it was cold and rained a lot!

I used a Kifaru 4 man Tipi for living space, a wood burning stove for heat and cooking. used the BD as my prime mover, making the most of the BD's modular configurations, where I could set up base camp and deploy out from there. even to the extent where I took enough gear and clothing, to necessitate a storage unit!
no kidding...

another example is the Hunter 29er shod in 37c Marathon Cross.
I used this setup to ride Portland to Ventura.
typically doing about 80 miles a day.
one day did 114 miles in under 8hrs.

when I got to Arcata I raced 12hrs of Humboldt.

there are a lot of ways to tour.

cyccommute 

Not necessarily true in all locations. There are lots of places in the middle part of the US that are far from cafes or even grocery stores. A prime example is along I29 on the western side of Iowa. In about 350 miles from Sioux Falls, SD to Atchison, KS, there's only about 4 places to stop for food. There's Sioux City (~85 miles from Sioux Falls), Council Bluffs (~100 miles further down the road) and Atchison which is 144 very empty miles further along. There are lots of little towns along the way but almost all of them (in 2003) have been hollowed out by the ant hill effect of HelMarts at all of the above cities.

A very similar situation occurs across parts of eastern Colorado. For example in section 7 of the TransAmerica from Alexander, KS to Pueblo (292 miles), you pass through a whole bunch of wide spots that used to be towns but not many of them are anymore. If you need food, you go to Lamar, La Junta or ...almost never... to Pueblo. In fact, if I were traveling the TransAmerica, I'd drop 30 miles south and follow US50 which still has some civilization left...and it's more interesting.

cyccommute 

Yup. Tent, sleeping bag and lighter cooking stuff is probably the best way to shed pounds. Setting your bike up so that all you need for tools is a few allen wrenches by replacing using a threadless fork, an external bearing bottom bracket, and Phil FSC hubs (only need a 5 mm wrench to disassemble them) goes a long way towards reducing your tools too.

prathmann

As I said above, the rest of the time you can make do with cold foods. I'm perfectly happy subsisting on cold sandwiches and other foods that don't need cooking for a few days at a time - so I don't see any problem with eliminating all the stove/pots/dishes/fuel/etc. in the stretches you mention here.

And I think you're painting a much more barren picture than is true at least for the places mentioned. E.g. Vermillion, between Sioux Falls and Sioux City, has lots of restaurants and food stores. And the first little town I checked on the next stretch, Onawa, halfway between Sioux City and Council Bluffs, has a number of local cafes in addition to chains like Subway and Pizza Hut. Similarly, the first little town I checked halfway along the next stretch to Atchison was Tarkio - it also has a Pizza Hut and several local cafes. I've found my GPS to come in very handy when touring. With reasonably current maps/points-of-interest, it lists all the cafes, grocery stores, motels, etc. along with phone numbers so you can verify that they're still open and check hours.

staehpj1

I've been working on going lighter and wrote an article about what I have been planning and doing.