Vik: I think I saw some trip report of yours from last year? Were you there with a couple little kids? This year's trip report looks amazing. I am sure glad we didn't have to deal with the flies that you encountered. The flies were bad down south on Gun Creek were we went for a little hike, but up north/west there weren't any (or none that I vividly remember).

2013 - I went there with Doug and his two kids.

I went twice in 2014. Once with Evan bikepacking and once with a basecamp group that did day trips out of Spruce Lake.

I was just there this year bikepacking with my buddy Scott. Trip reports are top 3 posts at link below.

https://vikapproved.wordpress.com/?s=chilcotins+2015

If you are going to bother buying a dynohub, build up a wheel and pedal it I'd get a dynolight so you aren't messing with the hassle and weight of a light battery.

That also leaves the power output from the hub available in the day to charge your GPS and phone.

I don't think you need a dynohub, but once to go to the trouble of getting one you might as well take advantage of it as much as possible.

So that eliminates the ITI right? Most of that is not on single track. At least in the sense of the kind I ride in the northeast.

I'd expect things to be different in AK than what we ride down south. I'm not familiar enough with AK to even begin to analyse the ITI.

I'm talking about what I know.

A mountain bike race is mostly singletrack IMO. It's not defined by the equipment that gets used, but by the terrain that's travelled.

I've done lots of dirt touring on a mountain bike, but I don't consider that mountain biking.

I was ready to pull the trigger on the AfterShokz headphones, but realized they use a battery that needs charging to operate. I was stoked when I thought they didn't require their own power source.

Decided to try them anyways. Not having something in my ear and getting music anyways is worth a shot. 

Thanks for posting. Sorry for my repost above. I missed this.

There are lots of alternate options if you want to add extra riding to the route.

- visiting any number of the Gulf Islands
- side-trip to Tofino
- extending southern route to Port Renfrew and/or Jordan River

If you need any route planning help just holler.

GPX files are directional. That only matters if you want the GPS to feed to the correct performance data like distance/time to target. You can ignore it and just follow the line on your screen which is the same no matter what direction the track was ridden when collected.

If you want to ride the track opposite to the direction it was collected and want the performance data you should be able to invert the track in your GPS.

Indeed, that's a good point. It is the expensive "try" part that concerns me though. I've tried doing this with just one tire before, and the results were spectaculess.   One big leaky, gooey mess. I suppose I could give it another go. My preference would be something that DOES work over something that *should* work.  :-)

The fact the tire says tubeless ready doesn't guarantee anything. My last two tubeless setups the non-tubeless tire was a snap and the TLR tire required an industrial compressor to seat the bead.

Once setup though both worked flawlessly.

My buddy bought some TLR tires and couldn't get them mounted on his wheels. The same tire works perfectly for me on my brand of rims.

There are so many variables in setting wheels up tubeless.

I've run lots of tires tubeless that were not designed for that. So if you find something you like, but it does not specifically say it's tubeless ready or UST I would not let that stop you from trying them.

I found mine at Best buy at a clearance price of 49.99 and really, the sound is excellent

Sound is excellent on AfterShoks?

Thanks for the report Carbonguy. I was on the trip with Evan [EvDog] in 2014 and just came back from another 6 day Chilcotins bikepacking trip on Monday. As you guys note stats are meaningless to anyone who has not travelled that area with their bike. The Chilcotins has some amazing bikepacking potential if you can get your head wrapped around the amount and difficulty of the hike-a-bike involved.

Great report Evan. I had not seen that before. Good to hear your perspective and glad you and Brian came along.

Maybe try AfterShoks.

That looks good. I may grab a set to try out. Thanks for posting.

Thanks

I tried a search with no results.

I'm wanting to up my mileage on tour I think music could be a help to get me through tough stretches. I don't like not hearing what's going on around me so I don't want to ride with ear phones in. So I was wondering if there were any speaker solutions that were light enough for on bike use and loud enough to be worthwhile?

If I was going to go this route I'd have a dynohub to power from.

This would only be for non-techy dirt road tours.

Anyone riding with small speakers?

If I can't find anything that looks reasonable I'll try riding with only one ear bud in and see if that works for me.

I've been working on piecing together a bikepacking route the length of Vancouver Island [~850kms] on 95%+ dirt. I was happy to finally ride the whole route in one shot back in June.



GPS track: http://ridewithgps.com/trips/5275401

Photos: https://www.flickr.com/photos/vikapproved/sets/72157655142727565

Ride Report: http://forums.mtbr.com/bikepacking-bike-expedition/vancouver-island-bikepacking-route-979909.html

Once again the bike industry absolutely sucks for small women. Go figure.

The bike industry doesn't have the power to make two physical objects overlap without interference no matter how much they want to.

You can still get quality 26ers that would buy you a bunch more saddle to tire clearance. Although I would just go with the rack and dry bag solution myself.

I have a Nomad and love it, but there is no room for a frame bag. Can you still carry the gear/food you plan to take without putting too much weight on your back?

Is there a thread, or better yet a forum where feeding ourselves on bikepacking trips is discussed?
I want to cook meals on my trips and want to know what you have encountered. What kind of food works best?
Have you ever attempted something beyond 'camping food' when on a trip?
Let me know!

Many thanks
Rick R

My bikepacking trips are about the riding not the camping. So I go with what is the easiest/lightest in terms of prep time, calories and stove fuel. It has to edible, but it does not have to be a culinary orgasm.

I have a dozen or so freeze dried backpacking meals I rotate through [mostly Backpacker's Pantry] for my evening meal.

Breakfasts are instant oatmeal.

Then I snack through the day on a variety of:

- beef jerky
- dried fruit
- nuts
- m&m's
- granola bars
- candy

When I am care camping I do it up and eat like a king. On my bike tours I focus on the riding.

When watching the many videos out there I've noticed that some bags seem to flipping around when the rider is riding out of saddle or rough trails.  Is this just poor packing or poor design? both? It's one of those things that would drive me nuts.

If you can reduce the weight on the front and back of your bike you will always be happy you did so. However, at some point you are down to a pretty basic load and it still have to be carried somewhere on your bike or in a pack.



I've got one of the new Porcelain Rocket seatbags with the metal supports. My seabag is now rock solid no matter how gnarly and rough the trail gets. It's a noticeable improvement over the older style seatbags.  

http://www.porcelainrocket.com/introducing-mr-fusion-2/

I am having trouble getting turn by turn "instructions' on my .gpx routes. I have added the navigation screens on the map page to tell me the distance to and name of next waypoints, but how do I now get that information into my route?
Do I have to make each and every turn a waypoint to have this work? If so, can this be done automatically when creating a route? OR, can an imported .gpx route have the waypoints automatically created or do I have to go through the route and create waypoints for every turn manually?

First question do you have maps that are capable of auto-routing you on your GPS on the desired trails you want to ride?

I don't so I create tracks manually and don't bother with the turn by turn navigation for bikepacking. Where I ride turns are not coming at me so fast I can't glance down at my screen and ensure I am still on route.

If I am doing a road ride I'll use that capability on my computer to rapidly generate a route for me by selecting a few points on the route and letting it auto-populate the rest of the route.

You can create a route manually by clicking on each turn to create a waypoint. Just be aware your Etrex can only process a limited number of waypoints per route file so you may need to create multiple files.