Bike Packing

Bike packing at sunset near Milagrosa Canyon

Lee and I continue to experiment with carrying our bikes on our backs. Most experiments to date have been strong failures. This time we took our old, beaten, internal frame packs out to ride/hike my “hot water hill” loop — Agua Caliente to Milagrosa.

We had most of our expedition gear, so I knew it wasn’t a day to push the climb, even though I really wanted to. I gave in to the technical challenges far sooner than I usually do. Once we started walking more than we were riding we dissassembled our bikes and loaded up. Our new strategy for hanging the bike worked quite well. It felt like a normal backpacking load rather than an awkward monstrosity. My pack is from my first backpacking trip at age ~14, so the fit isn’t exactly ideal. But we hiked a thousand feet of uphill and a thousand feet of downhill, so it was a good test. That’s almost a fifth of the grand canyon–how hard could 4 more times be? I know the answer to that one.

Riding with those packs was not ideal, in fact far from it. The hope is to not have to ship a pack up for use in the canyon. It’s easier logistically and would also give us the opportunity to train a bit for hiking with a load as we head north. It also opens up possiblities for future routes that might require a similar setup. We’ll see, though.

The sun set the sky on fire as we climbed to gain La Milagrosa ridge. Here we joined the classic mountain bike trail, so the bikes came back out and we enjoyed a technical descent before it got too dark. We walked the lower parts of the trail, then spun out some pavement on Soldier Trail back to our vehicle.

12 miles, 2500 feet of climbing