Over twelve years ago I wrote a series on bikepacking for Backpacking Light, which included what I still believe was the first systemic review of “modern” bikepacking gear.  It wasn’t an especially complex project to take on, given that the folks selling seatpacks numbered three (Carousel, Epic, Porcelain Rocket), and the folks selling off the shelf framebags numbered zero (Jannd having discontinued their partial frame bag a year or two prior).  I threw a review of singletrack suitable backpacks in there, as I believed (and still believe, even more against the grain than back then) that a 20-30 backpack is ideal for multiday technical riding, and none of those packs were marketed as mountain bike specific, something which fashion nonwithstanding has also changed dramatically.

I had some good ideas and writing, as well as some noteably immoderate language (“For virtually all bikepacking trips, a trailer with a huge load bespeaks of a problematic relationship with the world at large.”) which cannot be entirely explained away as snaring attention from an audience who were being newly exposed to non-foot based content.  Among my goals were a definition of bikepacking, a term I first saw in mid-90s Backpacker and has become the way to rebrand bike touring and “alt-cycling” generally as something other than a refresh of the Bridgestone and panniers era, as well as a core way to be lacksadaisical (and potentially outright bad) at riding bikes in the woods.  But more on that later.

One subsequent definition of bikepacking is that is it any form of racing which doesn’t have aid stations and is, perhaps, longer than 50 miles.  Again, here bikepacking is a zippier term than race touring or ultragravel or any number of other things, but I still like my original definition.  Bikepacking is singletrack focused multiday riding, trips were the goals of riding neat trail and exploring the landscape are on average equal goals, just as they are during an ideal backpacking trip.  Dirt touring is were the landscape aspect takes significant precedence over the technical aspect, and thus roads of various kinds form the majority of the route.  I like this last definition because it recognizes the conceptual continuity between what most touring riders do today, and what most cyclotourists did over the preceeding century.  Riding has always been a marvelously efficient way to move human perception through the landscape, and dramatic options with fewer motor vehicles have always been the prefered option, for obvious reasons.  Carbon 29er in this century or ballon tired fixie 100 years ago, the intent is the same.

I threw hellbiking into that original article as a third option along the spectrum, when the craft of moving a bike through challenging terrain took precedence.  Unsurprisingly this has remained the fringe of the fringe, as it doesn’t take especially severe terrain for walking to be more efficient, and in most opinions more enjoyable, than riding/pushing/carrying/dragging.  Kurt Refsnider’s ride of the CDT last year is illustrative here, as he averaged a bit more than 40 miles a day sticking as close as the law permits to the actual divide, riding an prodigious amount of steep and incipit trail in the process.  Contrast that with Skurka’s progress along the same terrain during his 2007 Great Western Loop, when he averaged high 30s.  I think it safe to assume comparable levels of fitness and craft in these two, making the performances on moderately technical and quite physical bikepacking terrain very close between mountain biking and walking.  In other words, it doesn’t really take much, especially for those without elite skills and fitness, for mountain biking to become an aesthetic rather than efficient choice.

Which in turn explains why the ongoing boom in bikepacking bags, which is to say the direct descendents of Carousel Design Works and Epic Designs, who between the them invented every product we see iterated today, is mostly not in bikepacking at all, but in dirt touring.  Proper bikepacking is, like other apex backcountry pursuits, quite hard, and just as with multiday ski mountaineering traverses, backcountry elk hunting, or backcountry packrafting hard whitewater, the number of people who can or want to do it is vastly less than the digital media landscape would suggest.  And here the alt-cycling landscape is actually inclusive and just generally swell.  Riding 30-50 miles of occasionally chunky two track, stopping for swimming and fishing and coffee breaks, is intensely enjoyable, in much the same way the endless miles of splashy roadside class II or 400 foot vert meadow skipping laps from your snow cave is fun enough to bend whatever language you were born to.  Cycling media does a better job creating a space for “average” pursuits, which I appreciate.  Even if we have to call it bikepacking.

All three seat packs from that original review were excellent, and I still use my gen 1 Viscacha to this day, and just as it did back then, it strikes me as perfect.  Economical, bomber in all the needed places, and intuitive.  The complaints, which have hardly changed for the past decade, about seatpacks being floppy and bouncy elude me.  Likely designs from other makers are not quite so dialed, but I remain convinced that 97% of floppy seatpacks have been and will be user error.  If you don’t fill the wedge at the front of your seatpack, or compress it well, or put your rock collection and scotch bottle all the way at the back, it might well be floppy because duh and physics, though I bet I could get my sleeping system and spare tubes and rock collection and scotch bottle all in the Viscacha, all in the least ideal order, and still have the thing be rock solid.

The other weekend some friends and I did a hybrid bikepacking and dirt touring trip, where I stuffed the Viscacha full (and ignored my dropper remote) for the dirt road miles and big push up an ATV to our lookout rental.  For that part my backpack was mostly empty, and carried light things like camp shoes, a book, and reserve potato chips (until my 10 liter Dromedary got filled, for the last from spring to mountain top).  On the final morning, helped by low food stores, the empty Viscacha went into my backpack, and I went bikepacking, using all of my 175mm of dropper travel on the 3000 foot descent to the river, and 10 quite technical but still mostly rideable miles around the bend back to the dirt road.  Those ten miles took close to three hours, roughly the same time it took to ride the subsequent 30 miles of dirt road back to the car.  The contrast made for an excellent day of bike riding.