# Clearer "Bikepacking" Routes



## silbor6 (Mar 18, 2018)

Ok, so please forgive me if I come across as "That Guy" , but I would like to , make a suggestion for the Melieu....

"Bikepacking" has many forms and I'm for all of them. However, doesn't there need to be some sort of distinction between road cyclist, or mountaim-bikers pedaling down a road vs. what I perceive to be "True" bikepacking which happens soley off-road and on trail? 

I mean, to my way of thinking, if you are "bike-packing" along side a highway, you are more than likely lost, or worse, homeless. 

Mind you, I am in no way opposed to anyone who wishes to cycle coast-to-coast along roadsides and take shelter in campgrounds, hotels, etc. A hard roof, local restaurants, and a hot shower DO have their place, but if I'm "Backpacking", ( not "Bikepacking"), and actually end up on a paved road, then I have either lost my way, run out of water, or am VERY, VERY lonely.

So how would the cycling industry designate what "bikepacking" routes are actually trail excursions vs. paved trips?

For sure we can all invest even more time researching our routes to the enth degree, but wouldn't it be nice to look at a muriad of routes and have a distinction immidiately as to whether or not the route is actual trail or an endeavor involving copious amounts of pavement?.....

...aaannndddd discuss.....


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## veloborealis (Oct 25, 2009)

Pavement = bike touring
Singletrack = bikepacking
Dirt/gravel or mixed surfaces = hellifino or dunno-duncare

Personally,, if a route is more than 50 percent non-paved and involves sleeping outdoors I don't have a problem calling it bikepacking.


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## leeboh (Aug 5, 2011)

Trying to get clean lines where none exist. Mostly pavement, bike touring, although that might include gravel. Bikepacking? Mostly off road, but mine in New England almost always involves pavement. Lots of built up areas in the East with less large swaths of dirt. How about drifting with a direction by bike? I use lots of bike paths too, 'cuse they go where I want to go. My summer trip is planned for the Cross NH trail. 83 miles the width of the state above the white mts. Then over to Groton SF, VT. Dirt roads then up to Kingdom trails to Mikes Tiki bar. Then back to the start in Bethel ME. Paved, dirt roads, gravel roads, bike paths, railroad ballast , atv trail, singletrack and the like will be encountered. Probably some hike a bike as well as some water crossings too. Planning on wild camping, stealth, dispersed in the state forest as well as a campground or two. Will try to poach a couch or yard in Kingdom trails. I make my breakfast, buy lunch and do something for dinner. Dinners are awesome. I going to go by at least 3 breweries. Beers at the end of the day are a thing for me. Using a rigid Karate Monkey with plus tires, carrying all my gear for sleep and wear, food resupply as needed. No rules, enjoy.


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## bikeny (Feb 26, 2004)

You cannot draw a line in the sand and say this is touring and that is Bikepacking. Unfortunately, even the best (read most trail) bikepacking routes include some pavement, simply because their's not enough trail and dirt roads around.

I find the way Bikepaking.com does it to be great. All their routes list the percent unpaved and the percent on singletrack, with the rest being pavement. Let's you know exactly the info you want.

Bikepacking has different definitions to different people. Some define it by what you are riding on, trails=Bikepacking. Others define it by the style, soft bags=Bikepacking. Even within those there are gray areas.


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## lentamentalisk (Jul 21, 2015)

Most conversations about this could be avoided if people spent less time talking about bikes and more time riding bikes...


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## Black Squirrel (Oct 13, 2016)

If you are pedaling from a to b (or back to a) and not sleeping in-between, it's bike riding. If you are sleeping in-between then it's bike packing.

In CT if you are planning on riding more than 20 miles or so, you will be hitting pavement at some point.


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## leeboh (Aug 5, 2011)

^^^ Check out the airline rail trail, some cool stuff. Hit it on my SE Mass, RI and CT trip. Bike paths almost the whole way across RI, E to W.


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## Black Squirrel (Oct 13, 2016)

I forgot about the airline trail. I will have to check it out, I probably rode by part of it today.


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## dave54 (Jul 1, 2003)

How fine grained do you want to make your definitions? 
What about multi-packing, where you backpack through a wilderness, and grab a previously stashed bike at the exit trailhead and bikepack to the origin.

Or bike fishing? I couldn't decide whether to go fishing or bike riding today, so I did both and rode to a local stream.

You could carry this to extremes where you too many subforums to track.


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## str8edgMTBMXer (Apr 15, 2015)

I feel like any time you are carrying your own gear, and supporting yourself on a trip that takes you overnight, and far away from home base is bike packing. Then, in my brain only, I break it down into smaller categories:

1. bike touring - is where there is more paved road, and clearly marked navigating. Amenities are readily available, and comfort level of sleeping and "camp"is relatively close to that of home. Generally less gear, and planing for provisions.

2. bike expedition - more unpaved roads, trails; rougher terrain. Amenities are more primitive. Farther away from settlement. You are actually camping..meaning no hotels. All sleeping is done in a tent, hammock, outside etc. More gear, and gear rooted in support for a longer time away form home. Higher percentage of food in the gear. For the most part, you are living on the bike

3. bushwacking - wilderness survival biking. Draw a straight line on the map from point A to B and go. Gear is aimed towards rugged survival far away from amenities. Planning for massive bike failures/repairs. Routes can go from clearly marked to making a new path somewhere. More hike-a-bike. Very far away from civilization/settlement for days. Total living on the bike

These are just my divisions. I personally prefer to bikepack more in definition 2 and 3, as #1 would be sort of like a traditional vacation, but on bike. Will most likely always be in definition #2 in my life since I am not physically ready to do wilderness survival biking.


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## str8edgMTBMXer (Apr 15, 2015)

lentamentalisk said:


> Most conversations about this could be avoided if people spent less time talking about bikes and more time riding bikes...


so why even have a forum? I thought these forums were for discussion/conversation


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

The way stuff gets used nowadays, there's too much gray area, loosey-goosey regional variations in use, and whatnot. I really don't care. If you want to see the changes, you're going to have to lay out some really solid reasons why it should be used a certain way, and spread it far and wide. More places than just mtbr. You'll have to convince existing authorities on the subject (bikepacking.com, bike manufacturers, bag manufacturers, and the media) to use your definitions, which likely means proving yourself as an authority on the subject.

IMO, "bikepacking" has 2 main elements to it. One being location-based in that it's going to mostly involve sleeping in tents/hammocks/bivys or possibly trailside shelters and it's primarily off-pavement, though some pavement in the route is to be expected, especially if you depart from your driveway and ride to the trails. I don't much care about the ratio of singletrack to gravel roads to doubletrack or whatever. Where I live, you can certainly plan a trip to exclude pavement, but unless it's really short it absolutely won't exclude gravel roads. The vast majority of 2hr mtb rides around here include significant gravel stretches as it is. Most closed to car traffic, but many not.

The other main element, I think, is that it's self-supported. A supported trip where someone else ferries your gear to camp isn't bikepacking, because you're not the one packing your stuff to camp. That's a guided tour, whether it's on singletrack or pavement.

I don't care if your trip stays exclusively on those gravel roads or not, or whether you use a cyclocross, gravel bike, or even a road bike on that stuff. I don't care if you're using exclusively soft bags, or if everything is mounted to racks.

All I care is that you're getting out, riding a bike, and sleeping outside.

There's a certain logic to considering touring as a subset of bikepacking, but it just depends, IMO. You can certainly do a long tour that could also be called bikepacking. But you could also be doing a guided tour or a "credit card tour" where you pack very little, if any, extra gear. I generally consider "touring" to be the broader definition (traveling by bike) and "bikepacking" to be a subset of touring where the point is to visit more remote places, which requires you to pack your own gear.

And yeah, then you've got further subsetting/line-blurring like packrafting, multi-packing, bikefishing, and so on. IMO, "expedition" pretty much includes some element of extremely rough conditions/bushwacking, hike-a-bike, extended periods of time "away", and dealing with unknown scenarios on the fly due to a lack of published information for travelers. The bikepacking trip I did a few weeks ago, IMO, would not fall under "expedition" even though I hauled everything on my bike (including 6L of water due to limited resupply), I slept in a hammock, and was miles from the nearest driveable road. I still only rode about 9mi round trip.


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## bachman1961 (Oct 9, 2013)

*This is how I do it and you shouldn't either !!*

I share some news with family now and then; FB , email, phone chat or what-ever and most of the time, my default is clear, simple language rather than sport-specific monikers, trendy terms or slang. I don't care to isolate them with foggy or unnecessary details from the topic at hand.
Same with intro to a new thing like bringing a new skier along... keep it simple and straightforward with terms and instruction.

In mentioning a bike trip planned, I refer to it as bike travel or bike camping if multi days. It doesn't seem to beg for further definition by family of all ages or backgrounds. Most know I mtn bike or have seen a photo/s. They'd likely not envision a road bike/touring set up for pavement nor would that be accurate but it's really not a concern I have anyways.


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## Rob_E (Nov 22, 2010)

Harold said:


> There's a certain logic to considering touring as a subset of bikepacking, but it just depends, IMO. You can certainly do a long tour that could also be called bikepacking. But you could also be doing a guided tour or a "credit card tour" where you pack very little, if any, extra gear. I generally consider "touring" to be the broader definition (traveling by bike) and "bikepacking" to be a subset of touring where the point is to visit more remote places, which requires you to pack your own gear.
> .


I also consider bike-packing to be a subset of touring. To me, if you wake up in the morning, ride your bike to a 2nd location, wake up and ride to 3rd location, that's bike touring. Doesn't matter about roads, terrain, gear, etc.

Beyond the umbrella of "bike touring," there are several subsets, but there's so much grey area, and lack of consensus, that trying to come up with a specific definition seems unlikely, and, since you'll never win everyone over to one definition, ultimately not that helpful. Better to use the term that you think best fits, then, if someone is curious, they'll ask enough questions to get to the specifics. Because for me, it's not difficult to come up with a trip that I would say is definitely not bike-packing, and it's not difficult to come up with a trip that definitely is bike-packing, but then there's the whole stretch in between where cases could be made.

If you're primarily off pavement, self-supported, and camping, that's probably bike packing. What if you take your bike on trails from hotel to hotel? I don't know. That still seems like it might be bikepacking, so that's a grey area for me.

If you're primarily on roads, then you're pavement touring or road touring. If you're sleeping in hotels, you're credit card touring. And, of course, there's overlap.

Last year I rode my Troll out of Cleveland and into central Ohio, a little over 100 miles in two days, and probably 80% of it was off-road. Touring or bikepacking? My gear was all stored in what is currently the standard for bike-packing: handlebar roll, frame bag, seat bag. I camped at the end of each riding day. Does that push me towards bikepacking? The off-road sections were maybe 50% paved rail-trail. Does that push me more towards touring? The next two days totaled about 140 miles to Pittsburgh, most of it on paved roads, with maybe 20 on dirt rail-trail and/or gravel/dirt roads and another 10-20 on paved rail-trail. I wouldn't call that bikepacking. I didn't even camp on the Pittsburgh night. That was straight-up road touring, albeit with a bike-backing rig. The rest of the trip was 4 days spent covering 150 miles, almost all of which was unpaved rail-trail. I camped every night until I reached my destination. Camping, while traveling unpaved, off-road routes with a handlebar roll, frame bag, and a seat bag for my gear sounds a lot like bike-packing, but it was along the Great Allegheny Passage, which is a popular touring route for all kinds of cyclists. I did the same trail later in the year as a credit card tour with a couple of people riding cruisers, so even though I can describe it in a way that fits most definitions of bike-packing, it didn't feel any different that road touring, really, apart from the lack of cars.

So, ultimately, I find a strict definition of bikepacking difficult to pin down. Especially since, as has been said, even if you spend good chunks of time riding singletrack in the wilderness, it's hard to completely avoid the pavement sections, the gravel roads, etc. So then does it become a question of percentage on particular riding surfaces? Too complicated to bother with. Ride your bike. Have fun. Call it what you want.


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## str8edgMTBMXer (Apr 15, 2015)

Rob_E said:


> I also consider bike-packing to be a subset of touring. To me, if you wake up in the morning, ride your bike to a 2nd location, wake up and ride to 3rd location, that's bike touring. Doesn't matter about roads, terrain, gear, etc.
> 
> Beyond the umbrella of "bike touring," there are several subsets, but there's so much grey area, and lack of consensus, that trying to come up with a specific definition seems unlikely, and, since you'll never win everyone over to one definition, ultimately not that helpful. Better to use the term that you think best fits, then, if someone is curious, they'll ask enough questions to get to the specifics. Because for me, it's not difficult to come up with a trip that I would say is definitely not bike-packing, and it's not difficult to come up with a trip that definitely is bike-packing, but then there's the whole stretch in between where cases could be made.
> 
> ...


I agree...until this thread, I never really thought about it other than I have packed stuff on my bike, so I am bike packing. The way you live while doing it, I think, creates the differences.

Where did you ride in Ohio? Was it part of the Buckeye trail? I am planning on doing the GAP/C&O trail next summer I think. Did you do a trip write up for that? Would be interested to hear of that whole thing!!


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## Rob_E (Nov 22, 2010)

sXeXBMXer said:


> Where did you ride in Ohio? Was it part of the Buckeye trail? I am planning on doing the GAP/C&O trail next summer I think. Did you do a trip write up for that? Would be interested to hear of that whole thing!!


Not the Buckeye Trail. I've looked at at on occasion, but it seems like much of the off-road sections are hiking only, which doesn't sound as fun.

Ohio does have a cross-state, mostly off-road (mostly rail-trail plus some canal trails in the northern section) bike route called the Ohio to Erie Trail. Starts in Cincinnati, ends in Cleveland (or vice versa). https://www.ohiotoerietrail.org/

I camp almost every Memorial Day at the same, central Ohio campsite (near Gann/Brinkhaven). The closest major airport is Columbus, but a few years ago I flew into Cincinnati and biked up the Ohio2Erie to camp. http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/O2E2014

Then last year I decided to fill in the part I missed by flying in to Cleveland and biking down to camp. And when the camping weekend was over, I biked to Pittsburgh to do the GAP/C&O. But by the time I got to Pittsburgh, I was tired of racing daylight at the end of every day, and I decided to just do the GAP at a much more leisurely pace, and save the C&O for another day.
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/mohicangap2017


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## mike_kelly (Jul 18, 2016)

I agree that this nomenclature is a problem. I am not interested in gravel racing or overnighting on gnarly singletrack. What I am interested in is using bikepacking bags on a road bike for ultra-light bike touring. 

The overlap in nomenclature makes it tedious to do research when so many of the hits are not what I am looking for information about.

I wish road bikepacking, using dirt roads and small village trails, could be referred to as "ultra-light" touring or something to differentiate it from both MTB bikepacking and classic full panniers heavy bicycle touring.

Cheers


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

mike_kelly said:


> I agree that this nomenclature is a problem. I am not interested in gravel racing or overnighting on gnarly singletrack. What I am interested in is using bikepacking bags on a road bike for ultra-light bike touring.
> 
> The overlap in nomenclature makes it tedious to do research when so many of the hits are not what I am looking for information about.
> 
> ...


I don't see such a huge problem here. What you're describing is is just touring with soft bags instead of panniers. So your gear is going to overlap with what people use for bikepacking on singletrack more than it will for heavy loaded touring. Nothing wrong with that.

There's already a precedent of describing what you want as ultralight touring. It comes from backpacking/ultralight backpacking. Doing the same thing, in the same places, but with lighter loadouts. Some people might refer to "credit card touring" since they're using hotels/hostels and restaurants, but that sounds a bit more specific, even, than what you're after. What you propose makes sense, so start using it. Write about it. It's not a strange departure from existing language, so adoption will probably pick up.

What I fail to see is how you have a hard time finding information. What are you looking for?


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## mike_kelly (Jul 18, 2016)

The use of bikepacking bags on a high performance road bike, that supports wide tires, allows picking routes that a heavy tourer traditionally does not pick. But allows riding for riding fun not just transportation to travel locations as heavy touring bikes allow. So when I do research I am looking for routes, in Europe in particular, that combine more sporty road touring that allows the use of small village roads that are not paved. But when you use the term Bikepacking most of the hits are harder core mountain bike routes on singletrack. The term ultra-light bike touring gets hits about more traditional paved road bike users that just packed light.

There is the beginnings of a new category of fast high performance road/gravel bikes, that may have been designed for gravel racing for instance, used for touring but allowing new routes. 

I am thinking of the GCN Morroco video using the new 3T Explor as an example.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

mike_kelly said:


> The use of bikepacking bags on a high performance road bike, that supports wide tires, allows picking routes that a heavy tourer traditionally does not pick. But allows riding for riding fun not just transportation to travel locations as heavy touring bikes allow. So when I do research I am looking for routes, in Europe in particular, that combine more sporty road touring that allows the use of small village roads that are not paved. But when you use the term Bikepacking most of the hits are harder core mountain bike routes on singletrack. The term ultra-light bike touring gets hits about more traditional paved road bike users that just packed light.
> 
> There is the beginnings of a new category of fast high performance road/gravel bikes, that may have been designed for gravel racing for instance, used for touring but allowing new routes.
> 
> I am thinking of the GCN Morroco video using the new 3T Explor as an example.


Well, for one, since this is a mtb site, the sort of riding you're looking for is not going to be well-represented. But even then, it sounds like you're wanting to do something a bit new, that's enabled by newer bikes. You're simply not going to find a whole lot from other people doing the exact same thing. In some respects, you're going to be pioneering. So instead of trying to look for stuff that others have already done, it sounds to me like you need to look at maps more than ride reports or published guides. Do a bunch of routes of your own devising, and publish the ones that you like best.

That's what a ton of people have had to do for mtb type bikepacking, because it is also relatively new as a labeled "thing" even though people have been riding into the woods with camping gear (using a lot of plain old touring gear and camping gear) for longer than there have been labeled "mountain bikes". Look at maps of trails and gravel roads, and put together a route that looks interesting, and suits your goals. Except in your case, you'll be looking at maps of paved and unpaved roads in search of something that suits you, whatever that might be.

It doesn't need a name for you to start doing it.


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## noonievut (Feb 17, 2004)

The thread title included the word "routes", and when I read that I was interested to know more. Didn't quite learn anything on this from the thread so far, but lots of good comments.

As someone who is interested in riding his gravel bike (27.5x1.9" tires) on a variety of surfaces (because I don't live in an area with endless gravel roads), I would love a map/app that shows me an area and lists all of the ride-able surfaces, with a legend for surface type. I'm not saying I want to plan out such a route turn-by-turn (and by surface), but I would like to know what an area has to offer, get lost, get found again and check such map/app for what suits me that day/time. I can kind of gleam this from a number of resources, but an all-in-one map/app would be nice.

For where I live and ride, I've got such a map (in my mind). It has taken years to develop and continues to expand. Looking back though, it has been nice to put this together over the years. I can now stitch together a slightly different ride each time. But from day one it could have been drawn up, and edited a bit over time. I now do long rides that include paved roads, paved bike trails, rail trails, gravel roads, jeep roads, double track and single track. I got to know the singletrack from mountain biking, the paved roads from road riding, and the gravel roads from riding my 'gravel' bike. Given my current bikes capabilities, I now do single rides hitting all of these surface types and find it to be the most enjoyable riding I've ever done.

However, if I wanted to explore a new area it would take a good deal of research to learn 50% of what I know about my own area...while this would be enjoyable (I like this sort of thing), it would be time consuming and I would still miss a lot for sure. If I wanted to throw some bags on my bike to camp/eat and go on multi-day excursions in new areas it would be even harder (would still be great, as you don't know what you're missing if you never knew it was there).

When I search out locations and general routes for bike touring / bikepacking, I find them too specific to a single type of ride/surface. If I spend more time planning a future multi-day ride I can certainly find something decent, but I've yet to find an 'area' within a few hours drive of where I live that, with minimal research, tells me it's a great match for my style of riding. And it's not that my riding area is perfect, it's just that I know it so well.


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## c_kyle (Sep 2, 2005)

In the SE US, you cannot ride very far without having to take a maintained road connector to more unmaintained doubletrack or singletrack. Down here, you can easily ride 100 or more miles of offroad in a day; to be able to do that, you've taken numerous paved connectors to link up all that trail.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

c_kyle said:


> In the SE US, you cannot ride very far without having to take a maintained road connector to more unmaintained doubletrack or singletrack. Down here, you can easily ride 100 or more miles of offroad in a day; to be able to do that, you've taken numerous paved connectors to link up all that trail.


In some parts, you can do better at avoiding pavement for trips of 100mi or so. Gravel, no, you won't avoid that. But there are some great 100+mi gravel routes you can do if that is more your bag. Granted, if you want to do more, you will need to link pavement somewhere.

Bikepacking.com just posted a sweet looking 200+ mi point to point route that is gravel bike focused, but includes some nice scenic pavement, passes by at least a dozen breweries, and the route comes within 5mi of my house. Overnight options include hotels, hostels, airbnbs, and camping depending on your preferences. A trip could possibly include all of those, even.

If you want to hit a route like that light and fast, you could do it that way. Or you could take it slow, too.

That stuff is out there, but someone has to scout it out first. And if you want to be able to find said routes, you should scout and most importantly publish some for others to find and ride.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk


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