cyccommute 

I can swing my leg over the seat pack without much issue. If I can’t, I just lift my leg over the top tube. I have to mount my tandem that way. It’s not my favorite but swing a leg over the tandem would probably be frowned upon by my stoker.

That can be an issue. But most of my bikepacking is done in remote areas where I have to carry everything I want or I go without. There aren’t any grocery stores on Hagerman Pass.

I use mine for the purpose they were designed for…remote touring. If the roads look like this…



I’m using a mountain bike with suspension and bikepacking bags.


For pavement or even smooth dirt like this


I choose panniers. I prefer panniers but they just don’t work all that well when the going gets rough.

My 5’ tall wife has thrown a leg over the top tube forever. She simply can’t get her leg up high enough to get over the saddle even without anything on it.

I don’t really tour on single track but that’s just semantics. This is ostensively a “road”. It was so rough even on a full dual suspension bike that I couldn’t ride it much faster than 10 mph on a pretty good downhill. It was about 15 miles of rocks.


I do bikepacking (original meaning) because it lets me go to places where most tourists never go.

abdon 

Meh. To me anytime you transport yourself and spend the night away it is all touring. Whether is months, or credit card touring, or going to a campground overnight, same same. What bike and how you wanna strap your load, also a big fat whatever.

This guy knows what I'm talking about:

Tourist in MSN

It is not that bad. I described in this post how I get on and off a bike and the reason why I started doing it that way decades ago.
https://www.bikeforums.net/22580787-post8.html

And for my example, I used a horizontal top tube bike which makes it much harder.

Tourist in MSN

Your photo of the Penny Farthing reminded me of a bikepacker I saw in Iceland nine years ago.

But, since he only has one wheel, maybe he was a uni-packer instead of a bikepacker?



He has racks, but no panniers on his single speed, so I would call that ___-packing, not ___-touring

abdon 

To me anybody who carries all their gear on a bike and go overnight somewhere is touring. The rest is style, not substance. Heck when I was credit card touring Japan I could have packed all my stuff without paneers, the experience would have been 100% the same.

BobG

I don't have the flexibility to kick over the top tube. The cowboy mount with 4" pedal height boost is the only way I can do it.

I had no problem with panniers on Schofield Pass CO (yes, wider tires and suspension would have been nice!) Had road toured all the way from Canada and didn't want to bring a MTB just for one pass.

I did "ride" the entire pass, picking my way up slowly through the rubble. That said, I had to carry the bike across a lingering snowfield up high and come back for the bags. So yes, I actually did some "bikepacking"! Wouldn't want to ride westbound down it on a touring rig though.

Pictured below are old, discontinued "Kangaroo Baggs" panniers. Designed for the 90s MTB crowd to not bounce off. Previously posted at other threads but here it is again ...


Schofield Pass CO

Tourist in MSN

Noted, not disagreeing.

JohnJ80

I'm a big fan of Tailfin. We've switched over to mostly Tailfin too for our credit card touring trips. The Aeropack is genius and the racks are awesome. I sort of sense that they're working on some frame bags after they did their top tube bags. I think that with their panniers on the back and then a frame bag below the top tube for some of the heavier stuff, and that would be a really nice setup.

mtnbud

When I tried using a rear rack offroad, the metal in the rack fatigued and broke. I'd be okay with using a metal rack offroad if I had some kind of guarantee that the rack wouldn't break. I do think bikepacking bags are set up so they're not bouncing and jostling around as much as panniers would be bouncing offroad.

john m flores 

I wonder if that's Ed Pratt's, the guy who unicycled around the world. He's made some great videos on YouTube

Tourist in MSN

I stopped to see the sights and saw the unicycle leaning against the sign, snapped a couple photos. Then went to take a few photos of the scenery, when I came back to my bike the unicycle was gone. June 19, 2016 in Iceland. I never had a chance to see the rider.

cyccommute 

Get a better rack. An aluminum one isn’t going to last long. A steel one like a Tubus, on the other hand, is certainly up to the job.

That said, the bouncing around of a pannier off-road is going to put a lot of stress on the pannier hardware which is another point of failure. With all the warts that bikepacking gear has…and they have a lot of warts…they do well for their intended purpose. I like to say that bikepacking gear is the best of the bad solutions for off-road touring.

Paul_P

Some things can be done to reduce the bouncing around.

I've installed an extra lower hook to my four ortlieb panniers (bike packers at the rear and sport packers up front) and two extra upper hooks each to the rear panniers).
I added neoprene tubing to the rack rods to which the panniers attach for a snug fit.
I also added some adhesive foam pads between pannier and rack wherever there was still some movement.

Probably doesn't do much for overall stress on the racks, but gets rid of percussive type stress and the rattles that go with it.

Ortlieb make it easy by selling extra parts.

One day I'll get a steel rack, when I can afford it. I'm very limited in choices for the front since I have to be able to remove the front wheel to park my bike in my appartment stairwell, not to mention that I have a suspension fork.

cyccommute 

The issue isn’t necessarily the panniers “moving around”. The contact points…rank hooks and lower attachments…that are the weak point. On Ortliebs, the rack hooks and lower attachment are just plastic that really can’t take too much stress. On the road, the bike and, more importantly, the panniers aren’t bouncing around a lot so the plastic hooks are adequate. Off-road, the load in the panniers is constantly bouncing up and down which unloads and then loads the hooks. It wouldn’t take too long to start cracking those hooks. I use Ortliebs QL1 anchor on my panniers and have found them bouncing out of especially the front on gravel roads and bumps. Someone used to make a metal hook with a locking mechanism for the upper attachment (can’t remember who) which would be better but most panniers now have plastic fasteners which are just fine for smooth travel.

Ortlieb does a very good job of maintaining parts for which I’m thankful. However, if I’m half way down a rocky jeep road 30 miles from the nearest cluster of cabins, that doesn’t do me much good. Bikepacking bags are going to handle the job better. Again, I’m not huge fan of bikepacking gear and would prefer to use panniers but I’ve used panniers in the past and they have fatal flaws for off-road use.

Fork leg bags are a solution to front suspension and carrying stuff. They do have the same problem as low rider panniers, however. They can scrap on stuff. I wore a hole in them on a particularly rugged trail.

Tourist in MSN

Since we are getting down to the details of Ortlieb hooks, on my front panniers on a Tara rack, the Tara has unusually large diameter tubing. And I made it worse by putting plastic hose over the tubing to prevent chaffing. So I made some aluminum bar stock hooks for the lower hooks, 3/4 X 1/8 inch aluminum and stretched some innertube rubber over the aluminum.



In the photo above, that was after two weeks of touring and the electrical tape I put over the hose to keep it in place was coming unglued, next time will put some small zip ties over the tape. Slit the hose lengthwise so I can put it over the tube.

One of my DIY hooks is below.

Roughstuff

Photos photos photos! You can never have too many photos! Keep 'em coming.

cyccommute 

Say no more. These are from various trips I’ve made.


Cripple Creek. Trip detailed in Gold Fever. Rode from Colorado Springs to Cripple Creek to Cañon City back to Colorado Springs via Cripple Creek.


A trip into deep south eastern Colorado. Picture Canyon is almost to the Colorado/Kansas/Oklahoma line. In fact, the Colorado/Oklahoma border is only about a mile south of this point. I was going to ride from Picture Canyon to Carrizo Canyon which is about 40 miles. Unfortunately, the “trail” is a suggestion at best and it took way too long to find my way out of Picture Canyon. Will try it again someday.



Hagerman Pass. Rode from Frisco, CO to Leadville to Glenwood Springs.



Weston Pass. Fairplay to Buena Vista.



Crested Butte. Gunnison to Crested Butte to Carbondale to Glenwood Springs.



Rollins Pass. Winter Park to Boulder.



Cowboy Trail in Nebraska.



My very first “bikepacking trip” although we didn’t call it that then. 1984. Rode from Rollinsville over to Winter Park to Dillion to Woodland Park and back to Denver.

Thigh Master

Great topic. CYCLINGABOUT has a decent YouTube on this…

Paul_P

I can't get my head around having so much weight above the wheels in the bikepacking setup. I get that any lower down and you'll hit rocks and roots and stuff, but in tough, narrow conditions where nimble control is paramount the last thing you want is a high center of gravity.

I did many trial day runs with my 4-pannier, 1-handlebar bar bag equipped montain bike with a lot of weight in the panniers and the bike rode pretty well (bike path and mostly smooth gravel). I actually preferred the slower steering up front. Before setting out on a real run, I added maybe 8 lbs of food and a couple of light things on top of my rear rack not thinking that the extra weight would make that much of a difference overall being a small percentage increase in total weight. When I set out I couldn't believe how bad the back swayed. It was awful and disheartening. I admit I was carrying way too much overall and will be paring down quite a bit, but that weight placed above the wheels made a huge difference.

So the bikepacking setup may be necessary to be able to get to where you wouln't be able to otherwise, but handling must be awful.

djb

Not at all, I'd say the main reason is not having that much weight overall. My bike has dropbars and it still handles really well on single track.

MarcusT

Some interesting posts here and completely agree about not wanting panniers when riding trails for clearance, but what about those who never leave the road?

Is there a purpose or is it just fashion?

cyccommute 

Nimble handling doesn’t mean anything if your bike is being stopped by those rocks and roots grabbing stuff hanging off your bike. My picture from Picture Canyon is one where I used fork legs and it happened to be the closest trail I’ve done. “Trail” is probably too specific for the route that I was attempting to follow. The post in the picture below is the way that they mark the “trail” and you can see that the trail kind of disappears.


The faint path is the established trail.



You can see the trail and marker below. Behind me, the trail just kind of disappeared.


And the picture I originally posted was the actual trail. I eventually found that I could follow cow paths and get more of where I needed to get to. The fork bags dragged everywhere and eventually wore a hole in them. While they were bad, panniers would have been worse.

Handling isn’t great. The yard sale picture in post 6 is far too common for me in off-road touring. Even when I am aware of the problems, endos keep catching me off guard. But it’s better than just about any other alternative.

cyccommute 

That’s the point where it gets silly. You are trading a reasonable low center of gravity, ease of packing, ease of moving the luggage off the bike, ease of mounting the panniers on the bike, and improved handling for a bit better aerodynamics in a situation where you really don’t need better aerodynamics. If you need to go that much faster, why not just have someone follow you around in a sag wagon. As I say about most large group sponsored “tours”, they are too much de France and not enough Tour. It’s not a race.

Tourist in MSN

I met a couple from Utah when I was in Iceland. They were touring with bikepacking gear on their road bikes for two weeks. And they clearly were very minimalistic in their packing.





Their bikes were Ritchey Break Away frames, so they could pack the bikes in small cases. This trip for them would have cost $300 more each if they had to pay the oversize fees that Delta charged at that time if they did not have coupled bikes.

My point is that not only was their luggage minimalist, the packed bike luggage was minimalist at the airport too.

***

And I know a gal that was trying to figure out how to set up her bike for a week long credit card tour, she asked me about front panniers. I suggested she try the anything cages on her fork instead since she was looking at only a tiny volume. That is what she did. No racks on her bike. She later ditched the bikepacking saddlebag and went with a Carradice Nelson Longflap saddle bag.

Speaking of the Nelson Longflap, someone on this forum has toured with very minimalist camping gear, I think it is Nun?

john m flores 

Met this fellow last year as he was riding cross country in about 6 weeks, a healthy pace. He stuck mostly to asphalt but was using bikepacking bags.