Humping my gear

When one is bike camping, you essentially need to pack like a backpacker, and then add other bike support elements. When travelling backcountry and roads, you cannot easily get to supplies as needed. When doing this solo, you can not share the load for tents, cook gear, water filters, spare parts, tools, etc. After some research, there seems to be 3 different ways to carry yer shhtuff.

First, Bike packing route for mountain bikes, which is getting popular and numerous products from multiple vendors are available. This dovetails with the ultralight backpacking advances coupled with a minimalist approach to gear. In essence, strap gear into your frame triangle, top bar, onto handle bars and large under seat bags. Even strapped to side of front forks. However,  2 things work against this for me; solo trip means I need to carry everything needed, and also I am short fellow with a small bike - not alot of extra room.

The second method is the more traditional panniers but with beefed up panniers. A bit more room, but still a challenge for the same reasons above. Also, I am not really a minimalist,  I like to be prepared for a variety of adverse situations. Also, it is not a race and would like to have some gear for non biking activities, like hiking and mayhaps fishing.

The 3rd method is a trailer, which is also recommended by the route sponsors. While there are 2 or 3 trailers brands out there, the one that seems universally used is B.O.B. trailers (Beast Of Burden) Yak and Ibex  (w/ shock) models. This can carry up to 70lbs!!! Though my target is about 30 lbs.

New Cook Kit

Preparing for a 2 month backcountry/backroads solo trip presents some new situations and challenges. Today's blog is about cook stoves. I have an msr white gas stove I have used for my weekend 14ner backpack trips. On an 8 week solo trip, how does one resupply gas? The common  size is one gallon containers, and generally in more specialized shops. How much to carry? The white gas backpacking bottle would cover perhaps 4 to 5 days with 2 boils of a liter each. I'd have  to score more fuel 10 to 12 times during the 2 months. I could replace with a multi fuel msr or equivalent, as gas stations a prevalent. So I am faced with carrying lots of gas, and probably not carrying a full gallon several times with chance of running out, or buying a new stove. On the new stove side,  there are also biomass stoves that burn twigs, kindling, pine cones, buffalo chips, etc. For those, you need not carry fuel. There are alcohol stoves that use isopropyl alcohol, everclear,or even Heet the gas additive. Some alcohol stoves work with biomass stoves. This is the route I chose, biomass with alcohol backup. I can carry a minimum amount of alcohol for backup. After research I chose the Solo Stove. I like the compact size (it fits in my cookkit)  and it is a 2 stage burner system with  gasifier design that increases efficiency and burns cleaner. The alcohol burner fits into the stove when packed up as well.

Test boil burning biomass, w/ new cook kit