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Bikepacking Guides
Trail Smarts & Dirt Wizardry
Thoughts, tips, practical advice, and dirt wizardry learned on the trail. If you are new to bikepacking, this might be a good place to start.
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Thoughts, tips, practical advice, and dirt wizardry learned on the trail. If you are new to bikepacking, this might be a good place to start.
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While a lot of modern bike standards and technologies are widely adopted at this point, some folks might still question whether it’s okay to go bikepacking with a suspension fork, particularly on extra-long trips. Others might have questions about maintenance, service intervals, reliability, and setup. To test all this, we put over 1,500 miles on a fork during a big bikepacking trip, then met with a veteran suspension expert to see how it fared, answer some questions, and do some science…
If you’re a shorter rider who struggles to find a place to fit all of your gear on your frame, this guide’s for you. Find our guide to packing small bikes for big adventures here, complete with tips for storage, suggestions for smaller gear, and more…
Newbie dogpackers Cass and Huesos share their experiences – and experiments – in cratepacking. Read on to find out all the details of their current setup and those they aspire to, along with a selection of photos from recent dirt road rambles in Oaxaca, Mexico…
The Sky Islands Odyssey is a journey through the vast borderlands of the Southwest, featuring a diverse network of rocky and sandy roads that traverse the ever-changing landscapes characteristic of the Sky Islands bioregion in the Sonoran Desert…
As a cyclist with over two decades of all-weather commuting, and a veteran of ten Arrowhead 135s – Minnesota’s winter ultra race – we asked Dave Gray, former Surly product designer and general off-grid survivalist, to share his packlist and tips for winter bikepacking…
Curious to understand what the fuss is all about, Neil has been trying his hand at single speeding throughout the past couple of months. In this video, he shares the top 10 things he’s learned during his single-speed crash course…
Bikepacking with your dog, aka dogpacking, can be an intimidating proposition. Fortunately, folks like John Freeman have spent the last seven years figuring out what works and what doesn’t. In this new guide, John (and Mira) walks through everything you need to know about dogpacking around the world…
In this guide, we cover a pre-bikepacking rig checklist and a maintenance agenda to help you prepare your trusty steed for a successful backcountry mission. Find the video guide as well as a 16-step checklist here…
Looking back on nearly a decade of bikepacking experience, RJ Sauer took advantage of this global pause to reflect on the relative pros and cons of bikepacking racing and bikepacking expeditions. Find his thoughts on the unique merits of each here, along with an expansive gallery of images from Iceland, Morocco, Alaska, and beyond…
In our latest video guide, we run through the pros and cons of bikepacking with a full-suspension bike, tips and tricks for dialing in your ride, and a list of bikepacking-friendly full-suspension bikes…
Interested in starting a training regimen for an upcoming bikepacking ride or ultra-endurance race? In our latest video, Colorado Trail Race and HT550 record holder Neil Beltchenko shares 11 training tips for bikepacking. Watch them here and find a few links to other training resources on this site…
If you’re looking to imbue your bikepacking trips with some practical creativity, how about carving a wooden spoon on your next overnight campout? Newbie whittler Cass made his first eating implement last year and shares his tips and thoughts on the process, as well as inspiration and advice from expert spoon-making bikepackers…