Wow, I just watched the video, and as a former documentary producer, I'm in awe. I'm not, in general, a huge fan of "look at my trip!" videos, but this one was spectacular.

I havent found a fat solution, but I tend to eat regular junk food when I'm on bikepacking trips/touring. Specifically: skittles and/or sour patch kids and chili cheese fritos. I've never done a trip longer than a week, so I assume this stuff'd get old after a while, but so far it's been my go to for 4-6 day trips. This stuff definitely needs to be supplemented with actual food, where available, but for on the bike food works for me.

May not be exactly what you're asking, but I am also short (and bike pack on a 26" bike for that reason, but anyway), and I had the same problem of the pika drooping and hitting the rear tire. I ended up using an old taillight mount to keep the front end of the pika low, which keeps the back from dipping down and rubbing on the rear tire.

Yep, there were 120 or 150 or so at the start. Quite a few folks apparently bailed pretty quickly. My understanding is Ira Ryan was fastest at approximately 28 hours. Jan Heine was second at 30.

I ended up dropping any pretensions of racing and slipped into fast touring mode pretty quickly, and finished in 58 hours. I ended up sticking with a couple teammates for the bulk of the ride, which was pleasant but not really in the racing spirit.

Still, as a first bikepacking effort, I enjoyed it quite a bit. I will do more!


This sums up much of the route to me.

Anybody have a guess as to what the bug situation's gonna be like? Will I be a sad panda without bivvy/tent?

There's a group of a half-dozen or so of us from San Francisco (including a tandem!) planning on doing this. I'm not sure of what we've come up with in terms of Klamath Falls return. I'll find out and report back.

Hey, Matt, do you have more details? I mean I could probably reconstruct your route, but offhand how much climbing, what kind of bike, and ('cause I'm lazy) do you have a gps track? I've spent time on 3 sides of MEndo forest, but not spent any time venturing within. That looks like good stuff!