nun

GCN have a few bikepacking videos now. They are well done and informative. However, this one on packing your gear shows some of my pet peeves; the number of bags that's required and the frame bag that stops you from fitting one liter water bottles.....also where's the room to carry extra food and some beer?

cyccommute 

I would ask where is any food? All of their bags are stuffed completely full and they had zero food in them. Coffee making gear but no food. I guess that was carried by the film crew

As for the frame bag and water bottles, there is a very good alternative that allows you to carry lots of water...far more than a liter...and gives you someplace to carry other stuff that fills the available space for food. It's called a Camelbak (or hydration pack if you want to be generic). An Osprey Raptor 14, for example, gives you an extra 14l of volume you can use for carrying stuff and the water is certainly more convenient to get to then their bottles are.

nun

They did mention using a water bladder carried in the frame bag and also mounting water bottles on the front forks. I find that 2 x one liter bottles in the cages is enough for most rides as resupply usually comes along. For extended distances between resupply I'll put a couple of bottles of Mountain Dew in my back pockets and maybe even one or two in my handlebar bag.

Maybe they could have put some food in the saddlebags. I usually start the day with fruit and snacks in my jersey pockets and always have a large freezer bag of goodies in my handlebar bag that is enough for a couple of days. I think the food aspect of things was poorly covered in the GCN video.

tyrion

They ate mostly at restaurants, slept outside only one night. But this is a fun video. A little staged looking, but fun.

Aushiker

On my last real bikepacking ride I carried up to 15 litres of water and pretty much all the food for 10 days riding. All was done on my Salsa Mukluk which I did add a Salsa Alternator rack to for the ride. I have in past when touring on my Surly Long Haul Trucker carried or hauled 35 litres of water and 20 days of food. The joys of touring more remote areas of Australia.

A taste of the riding ...



and the Salsa Mukluk as setup for this ride ...

cyccommute 

I'm astounded by the lengths to which people will go to avoid using a Camelbak. Yes, you could carry a water bladder in the frame bag but that would be at the expense of other things you could carry in that same frame bag. I also saw the bit about carrying the bottles on the fork but how would they mount them on those forks? It's not like the bikes they were using had mounts on the carbon forks nor have I seen many carbon forks with bottle mounts.

A hydration pack solves a number of problems. You can carry far more than 2 liters of water (100 oz bladder is almost 3 liters). You have the water right at your shoulder so that you can drink anytime you like without having to push a frame bag out of the way to fumble with getting a water bottle out of the cage. You can also pack ice into the bladder and have ice cold water instantly for several hours even in blast furnace conditions. An added benefit of the ice in the pack is that it seeps cold onto your back and keeps you cooler.

And you can have extra storage in the hydration pack and/or use a larger frame pack.

They couldn't have gotten another item into those bags. Frankly, as an experienced tourist for both bikepacking and road touring, I found their video to put their "newbieness" on full display.

nun

Awesome photos and I can see if you are riding the Nullarbor you'll need more than 2x waterbottles.

I can see the utility of something like a Camelbak for caring lots of water, but I just don't like carrying stuff on my back if I can avoid it and so far I've never needed that much water. My water bottles have wide mouths so whenever I can I also do the trick of filling them with ice and water in the morning. If I stop at a restaurant or go in a service station I'll also fill up on ice.

cyccommute 

I'm not sure where you live or ride but even in the humid southern US, I found that I need lots of water while riding. Growing up in the arid west, you learn to drink a lot of water...no matter what the stupid Scout Master says.

As for ice in a plastic water bottle, been there. Done that. In my experience it lasts about 30 minutes in summer temperatures. In a Camelbak (which is insulated), ice will last 3 to 6 hours or more depending on the temperature. When it's 100°F, ice water is the best thing around. Sure beats the tepid water in a plastic bottle.

djb

here is my take on the GCN vids, which Ive mentioned before--bikepacking is the growing ne thing, has been for a bunch of years now, its a popular topic so it makes sense for these guys to do a segment on it because folks are interested. Like a lot of magazine articles or whatever, not getting into important details is pretty common, and while it makes for an entertaining video, not getting into how to carry more food or water skirts around these important topics that a lot of younger, inexperienced riders just won't think about, or simply deem not overly important.

Part of my and the others responses to this here is the "been there, done that" factor, ie not having enough food, water, and not particularly wanting to repeat the experience. A 20 something yr old guy wont fret over this, and figure they can handle it, and anyway, it kinda fits in with the "hardass" image of bikepacking that often is the subtext in bikepacking stories.
Sure, in areas where you pass by villages and whatnot, its not an issue, or less of one, so its kind of all relative.

This topic came up last year with my friend who did a big part of the Divide trail, in the end, he just went with his panniers and figured that as he wasnt doing a race, the extra weight wasnt a real issue, the sections he had to walk up or take off panniers were very infrequent, and he just liked having the extra space for extra packing options of food or whatever.

Its great that bikepacking's popularity has folks getting out, although like Aushiker, it seems to me that a rear rack would be the most flexible option to allow for all kinds of carrying possibilities, and the extra weight of a rack and lightweight panniers compared to just a seat bag would be a very small penalty to pay for the flexibility, and certainly not a factor unless you are completely performance speed focused.