I'm not racing this but I did ride the OTT a few years ago and highly recommend it!

I'm not sure I understand why a Big Agnes Copper Spur 2-person bikepack version doesn't meet your reqs? free standing, short poles, <3lbs, at least according to their site.

One way might be to strap a dry bag to your handlebars. I've done that successfully. Might not work in technical singletrack but it's worked for me on hundreds of miles of rough dirt roads.

I got a Tumbleweed T rack on my SIR9, which is boost and 29er and it seems to work. Depends a little on where the rack mounts are but it has some flexibility I think.

perhaps it doesn't actually go without saying: Great report! super tempted to try to get the route in this fall, assuming it's achievable then.

I love the route and the challenge, but I think all the campgrounds are closed, and I don't believe that any of that stuff allows wild camping. So if people wanna do it all in a day, seems legit, but hard to do it as a bikepacking race at the moment, I think.

At least in the summer, most California and Oregon National Forests (and I assume state parks and the like), ban alcohol and wood fires, so that may be a consideration if things get firey again this summer.

As AZTRipper says, water capacity varies by route. I am most comfortable with at least a 5 liter capacity, but that's definitely overkill for many routes.

Glad to hear you enjoyed the report.

If anything in it dissuaded you from giving the trail a shot, though, it wasn't intentional! Overall a really great trip, and well worth doing.

also not AZ specific but I ran Ardent Races on my Oregon Timber Trail trip last summer. I'd have preferred something slightly treadier up front I think but the tires held up perfectly

I did the OTT last year in early July and it was pretty excellent conditions. Things degenerated later in the summer cause of fires.

hey, folks, earlier this summer (before everything caught fire) I rode the Oregon Timber Trail. I finally got around to writing up my trip.

How'd it go?

Hey, @havefungi have you sold this yet?

I and many of my friends have the 1Up racks: https://1upusa.com/ Not the cheapest but pretty damn bombproof.

Ah, bummer, Sean. Sorry I never got my shit together to ride this. Guess I'm gonna have to figure out a new aspiration for next year.

Thanks for your work on this race, though!

I assume you're talking 29er here, cause Stans rims and Spesh tires are known incompatible on 29" wheels. I've gotten it to work occasionally, but only that. I believe UST rims at least will work. Not sure about TCS.

Personally I'd fit the tire to the rim, not the other way around, so I don't have good advice about what rim to fit to that tire.

fun report! Thanks for sharing.

This is not a trip that'll make for epic Outside Magazine stories, but we managed to introduce a few people to bikepacking, so...

A couple members of my bike team proposed a summer solstice bike campout at Haypress campsite in the Marin Headlands, just north of San Francisco. Unfortunately, due to a slight misreading of the calendar they reserved the campsite for the day after the solstice, but we decided to press on anyway.

I've done a few multiday trips before, but this was to be my girlfriend's first bikepacking trip. She doesn't have any fancy bikepacking gear, so we figured we'd throw an old rack and some crappy panniers we have lying around on her Marin 29er, and I'd use my more compact setup. However, when I went to setup the rack on her bike, I realized it only works for 26" bikes. Fortunately, I use my old 26" hardtail for bikepacking, so I put the rack and crap on my bike and left her with the seatbag and a backpack.

We don't have much super lightweight stuff (our tent is more than 15 years old), so my bike was pretty loaded down.


Two of our friends were scheduled to meet us at our place at 5:30. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we were assembled and rolling around 6. A quick stop for burritos and we were headed to the Golden Gate Bridge. The one guy we were supposed to meet there ended up being 5 people and we rolled across to Marin en masse.


Haypress is reachable either by road or dirt. Because we have self respect, we of course took the dirt.


After the first singletrack descent, here's a fork where you can choose a fire road ascent with a waterbar-infested singletrack descent or a less-steep all fire road route. The folks on cross bikes opted for the all fire road trip and the rest of us (of course) chose singletrack.

We stopped to take a quick group shot at the top.


We rolled into the campsite around 8, and over the next hour or so, the group swelled to more than three dozen. A surprisingly sizable group of folks, many of whom were bike camping for the first time.


We proceeded to celebrate the solstice with drinks and some howling at the strawberry moon, and rose early enough the next day to catch some amazing scenery on the way to the office in time for a 9:30 meeting.


We're already discussing another trip; either to a different campground in Marin or maybe even south. We're also busily researching the public-transit-assisted routes to see what we can fit into a weeknight overnight. Good fun!

Well, it seems like one of those routes you have to work your way up to. Not a beginner's route at all. Now that I've done a couple 3-4 day trips, though, I'm an expert, so I'm in.

No, seriously, if this is a make-or-break year for this race, I'll move it from the bucket list to the top of the to-do list. It scares the crap out of me, but (partially because of that) I really wanna do it. Just let us know when you have a sense of the date.

The CSTR route is really in limbo right now, Blake is correct that a large area of the route burned for the second year in a row.

Sean, does that mean you're thinking it may not go next year? Or just that for the next few months it'd be hard to fit it together?

After doing a couple easier trips (e.g. Oregon Outback), I'm actually thinking about trying this one. I love the Tahoe area, and am excited to try to string together all that stuff. (Obviously, 9ish months out it easy to plan...)