Exploring some terrain for an introduction to bikepacking trip later this year.

Really loved the rugged climb these photos are taken on in an otherwise fairly flat area (still did just under 100ft a mile, so not entirely flat).

The climb was 8% average (peaking out around 20%). I was glad not to be loaded on it as I bent a tooth on my 11-48 cassette...so I'm back to 11-46. When I go back to 11-48 or 11-50/51 (requires a shifter and chain upgrade), I'll likely get an ebike cassette.

Ebike parts are more durable, and for bikepacking durability is most important. Marginal weight increases make almost no difference. Broken bikes will cost you more time than a few ounces will. Aluminum cogs are much more prone to damage in the Adirondacks with all the wood and grass getting into the cassette teeth.

Bikepack Every Month Challenge - UltraMTB

Just an FYI the challenge was/is April 2026 to March 2027. There are monthly prizes and also a prize for completing all 12 months. If you did a bikepack in April, May, June, July you can retroactively submit the route and photos. Those months are closed for monthly prizes but you can still win the yearly prize.

If you're thinking, man I don't need need another water bottle or some lame t-shirt! The prizes are pretty nice. OMM Racks, Fenix Lights, Industry Nine, Revelate Designs, Wolf Tooth, RidewithGPS, and premium stuff like that. I mean $500 in OMM racks is pretty nice for a monthly winner. And all you have to do is ride your bike and camp out.

I know what you're thinking...Ain't no way I'm bikepacking in December in the Adirondacks and I'd rather be boiled in tar than even look at my bike and camping gear in January. I feel you on that. But it's a great opportunity to visit the coast or head down south for a trip. The difference between the Adirondacks and Pennsylvania is about a month. Meaning Dec is November and March is April. If you head a little further south, MD or VA (and Virginia has some amazing riding), it's another few weeks reset. Same with going to the coast. Head to the coast and it resets a month or even two. Personally, I'll be way south if plans allow for at least December. January and February will be the crux but I'm leaning coastal Northeast.

And to me this part is totally cheating...but credit card tours count. So if you do a winter trip, you don't even have to suffer in the cold. It's almost like they just want folks to get out and do multi-day trips.

I can get behind that because that is precisely the intent of r/bikepack_adirondacks, for folks to get out!

Just one bikepack for the month of July. Summer is drawing down. We really only have 2 warm months with light left. October is a last gasp and November can end real fast (last year winter came early).

I thought I'd take it easy and follow some of the TATR. Not that I think the TATR is a rail trail but most of the sections I've been on have been better than my normal life exploration rides. Mainly lacking the constant blow down due to sections getting cleared from time to time each year. This section was very likely the worst I've done and I wouldn't recommend it.

However only about 2-3 miles sucked. Just not sure the juice was worth the squeeze to form a loop.

Once again, total respect to the folks that line up and complete the TATR OG. Keeping in mind I had 52mi planned which is a little less than 10% of the TATR and I was glad when I got through the crappy section.

Some highlights were the lake at sunrise and the absolute silence overnight having the entire place to myself. Me, the dog and the loons. 30 miles with wet feet, including all but 10 minutes of day 2. Hundreds of feet riding/walking through chest high grass (no ticks though). Probably close to a mile of riding through ferns and grass where I couldn't see the ground at all. At least one unbridged swamp crossing. Deer flies for days, and mosquitoes made a solid appearance.

At times I thought "this is pretty nice" and the gravel was very nice. I saw virtually no one. Zero cars passed us off-pavement and the pavement sections were pretty quiet as well.

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When I saw this, I thought, wow, this is precisely what we need in the Adirondacks. And this exact concept is what I personally aim to do with my exploratory rides. Map out trails that the average bikepacker can turn into a wilderness style off-road experience.

To be fair this isn't just a cycling issue, hikers need this as well.

There is really only one long distance hiking trail in the Adirondacks, the Northville Placid Trail. We can debate mid-length trails like the Cranberry Lake 50, but if a reasonably fit hiker can do it in a 2 day weekend (or an average hiker in 3), it's hardly long distance. Beyond that there are some concept trails like the NCST which has loads of road walking just to try to make a long distance trail.

Unfortunately the unit structure prevents connected long distance trails from being built because each unit needs an amended UMP before a trail can be completed (and easements need an RMP). If you know even a little about the process you know it's complicated in many ways. As a great example, you may know Lake George Wild Forest has never had a UMP. Behind the High Peaks it's the most visited single unit in the Adirondacks.

Why doesn't it have one?

• First off is money and resources. The DEC hasn't been funded properly since the Pataki administration and likely even then was below ideal levels, but it's never gotten better since then. At the same time the forest preserve has grown. Less money, more land to manage.
• Second is legal battles. The Lake George unit has actually been within 1 year of finalizing a UMP multiple times and each time a lawsuit pops up.

To build multi-unit trails, you need to amend every single UMP. Seeing how tough it is to even create or amend one UMP gives you insight into amending multiple at once. If I trail were to traverse the Adirondacks, it might traverse 10+ units. Imagine trying to amend 10 UMPs all at once to build a single connected trail? It's probably not going to happen.

However, if you consider a bike can make easy work of road sections and even use them to it's advantage (resupply in towns between units), you really can navigate the unit level approach. Each unit could have a bike specific trail (ideally 2, traversing NS/EW) that traverses the unit to an egress point. What the cyclist does once they get to the end is totally up to them. But they would essentially be able to hop units creating whatever long distance route they fancied.

How is this different then what already exist? On the surface it's really not any different. However, the lack of designed for bike trails leads to unnecessary user conflicts (some made up, some real). The biggest one is that hikers suspect "their" trails are being damaged by bikes. This is both true and untrue and I'll touch on that below.

The mountain biking scene in the Adirondacks is much better than it has ever been, but most of that is dense trail systems confined to local municipal land or private land. Where the failure is at is the long distance, *"wilderness style" bikepacking. The DEC has yet to implement it's general concept for multi-use MTB trails within the forest preserve. Multiple UMP/RMP have been approved to allow better MTB access to the Forest Preserve but those concepts have never been implemented.

Some examples the Township 33 RMP (Speculator Tree Farm, where Oak Mountain is located). The Moose River Plains UMP. Speculator was approved in 2024 and the Moose River UMP almost a decade ago, complete with IMBA written concept plan for the unit. No work was ever done on the MRP beyond adding some disc to largely unmaintained trails.

In a nutshell, the concepts are this:

• A hub and spoke model for MTB/bikepacking within the forest preserve
  • Hub: Dense concentration multi-use (but bike design) trail systems would be built around population centers or easily accessible areas. These aren't bike only trails, hikers, skiiers, and adaptive users would still have access. The bike design simply prevents erosion that is often seen on non biking trails.
  • Spoke: Longer distance "hiking style" travel trails would link to other trail systems and towns. This would allow for longer distance bikepacking routes off-pavement using the Forest Preserve. These trails would generally be existing trails that require some work to build to a multi-use standard but don't necessarily require outright new trails.

One thing it may be useful to educate the non cycling trail user groups on is that building a cycling trail to use specification mitigates trail damage by the very design. It's not anathema to the way new hiking trails are being built in the heavily traveled steep areas of the Forest Preserve (the High Peaks and surrounding mountainous units). Design matters more than use. And these trails can still make for pleasant hiking if they have an endpoint with something scenic. There are many natural surface bike spec trails that look eerily similar to modern hiking trails with a few extra design elements.

*I often use the term wilderness style when talking about bikepacking in the Adirondacks. That's because in the Adirondacks the difference between wild forest (where bikes are legal on almost every trail) and wilderness (where bikes are not) is virtually indistinguishable to most users. Aside from that many wilderness areas were at some point heavily developed and trammeled by man. In fact, one could probably make a compelling argument that some of the most wild and least visited (most untrammeled by man today) are in the wild forest. This is not really any different than a wild forest with a PFAR/admin road.

Trip stats: 49mi, 4600ft gain, 55% unpaved, 25% off-road (technical double track and straight up swamp), 0 resupply options on route. 22mi of pavement with a 40lb dog on my back.

Felt even more wild than the satellite looks. No significant population or resupply (I did pass one bar/restaurant at mile 40, being about 10 miles into a paved road stretch wearing a 40lb dog I'd have stopped if I brought money). The sparse population and lack of services always gives the Adirondacks a very remote feel. I guess no services, no people, it is remote.

Our destination/camp was the headwaters of New York's Erie Canal (also part of a ~700mi bikepacking route) which is also the headwaters of NY's Black River.

Short post mortem: Another trip that looked like high potential on paper or pixels but turned into the typical HAB i usually deal with exploring routes in the Adirondacks. The route is a no go, but I did gain valuable insight into future route planning. That said, over the last 4 years I've put together 14 very rideable routes of varying lengths and difficulties in the region and the part I enjoy most is the adventure of finding out how it's going to turn out while scouting.

49mi, 4600ft gain, 55% unpaved, 25% off-road (technical double track), 0 resupply options on route. 22mi of pavement with a 40lb dog on my back.

Felt even more wild than the satellite looks. No significant population or resupply (I did pass one bar/restaurant at mile 40 and if I had money on me...ooops, I would have stopped). Folks probably don't realize how sparse the density is in Northern NY and the Adirondacks. Having spent my entire adult life exploring there I am still sort of amazed (in the most positive sense) that it feels so remote.

Our destination/camp was the headwaters of New York's Erie Canal (which is also a 700mi bikepacking route) which is also the headwaters of NY's Black River. `

Short post mortem: Another trip that looked like high potential on paper or pixels but turned into the typical HAB i usually deal with exploring routes in the Adirondacks. That said, over the last 4 years I've put together 14 very rideable routes in the region and the part I enjoy most is the adventure of finding out how it's going to turn out while scouting.

49mi, 4600ft gain, 55% unpaved, 25% off-road (technical double track), 0 resupply options on route. 22mi of pavement with a 40lb dog on my back.

Felt even more wild than the satellite looks. No significant population or resupply (I did pass one bar/restaurant at mile 40). Folks probably don't realize how sparse the density is in Northern NY and the Adirondacks.

Our destination/camp was the headwaters of New York's Erie Canal (which is also a 700mi bikepacking route) which is also the headwaters of NY's Black River.

Short post mortem: Another trip that looked like high potential on paper or pixels but turned into the typical HAB i usually deal with exploring routes in the Adirondacks. That said, over the last 4 years I've put together 14 very rideable routes in the region and the part I enjoy most is the adventure of finding out how it's going to turn out while scouting.

After spending all spring in the eastern Adirondacks, my first max daylight summer trip was in the southwestern ADK.

As always lines on a map don't turn into routes. And unless you like type 2.5 fun this will never be a viable route. I did, however, gain valuable on the ground insight into future route planning.

In all we did 49mi, 4600ft, 27mi unpaved, 11ish mile of technical double track (trails), 22mi with a 40lb dog on my back on pavement (miserable with or without the dog, I would rather hike a bike than ride pavement...but what I rode in was so unrideable that I chose pavement). The dry steep sections were very steep and very rugged. I could have descended those with relative ease, but the mud bogs were hike a bike (HAB) both ways. Which meant miles of walking.

My favorite part, in 49mi there was one restaurant/bar and zero resupply (well, I guess one, the restaurant for a meal/beer). It felt super remote. And I think that is the appeal to me, the fact the Adirondacks are very remote feeling for bikepacking. I really don't think anywhere else in the east has that potential (besides maybe Maine).

The issue with the technical double track wasn't growth or even ruggedness, it was the bottomless mud pits. The green standing water on top told me it wasn't recent rains but probably permanent. At times I was hub deep in mud.

It was unfortunate because there was plenty of human infrastructure including a concrete bridge deep in. Even though it was wild, it is anything but untrammeled wilderness. It's a shame these roads couldn't be minimally maintained for 4 season use by the state or a private group. They are I believe still technically open for inholding access, and I don't believe the ATV/4WD use was illegal. As a result the trails were clear. ATV/4WD use is sort of a mixed blessing to me, those folks clear the trails, but if there's too much use they also destroy them. A little legal or illegal use is a boon, too much a bust.

The pros of these snowmobile abandoned roads being maintained (minimally) is that it would keep cyclist off hiking trails (as much as practicable). This would be a bonus for hikers and bikers. It would also open up another recreational revenue stream for the Adirondacks and upon up adaptive uses.

It's been a month since I've been bikepacking (7 weeks since it was in the Adirondacks)...might have the change my user name to u/notmuchbikepacking_adirondacks but I have gotten some exploratory rides in within the Blue Line.

I actually love the exploration part far more than actually riding a route once it's created so this isn't a bad thing, but I still like to end my day with a campfire and a night sleeping in my tent or a lean-to, so not a good thing either. Then again, suffering through the conditions in the photos without camping gear was a blessing.

I'll be back in the Forest Preserve this week to grab my June bikepack every month trip. If you miss a summer month, are you even into bikepacking?

Missing those 8pm sunsets with 45F highs and gated roads.

Just a quick video with the vertical clips of our spring S240 before the bugs and the people.

You gotta learn somewhere and sometimes it takes a cold sleepless night to make it stick.

Early V1 gravel bikepacking setup. Tailbags are great for bikepack racing and gnarly singletrack. I still use this bag for summer single track, but when the temps get to 15F at night you need either really expensive gear (ultralight, high end stuff) or just add a rack and suck up the (marginal but overstated) weight and drag.

In summer, even with the dog, I wouldn't even fill this setup, but in shoulder season, solo, this was about half the space I really needed. And cutting corners in cold means being cold.

Not ideal but you can toss a 35L Sea to Summit Big River on a rack (20L is the biggest I'll go but 35L will fit), which is double the capacity of my tailbag. In fact, probably closer to triple.

The problem with bikepacking bags is the capacity is based on water or sand volume. Real world volume, with irregular shaped objects that actually get packed, is probably 10-20% less than stated capacity. So I had a total of ~30L (back to front: 12L, 6L, 0.5L 10L, 1L, 1L) on that bike as pictured. That's not a ton of space when temps are already below what most places in the US see mid winter. 15F in October in the Adirondacks is not abnormal. The worst part (🤣) is the days are deceptively warm. mid-50s and 60s with sun. It's almost cruel how cold the nights are.

I also didn't realize for that trip that Klymit just makes up numbers for it's sleeping pad ratings. The static V insulated is listed as ~R4.5 or something reasonable. It's actually ~R1.8. That's the difference between a marginal 4 season and a straight up summer pad. The only pro of Klymit is the heavy pad is extremely durable. So it makes a great chair and I don't stress about dog nails (which to be fair, have probably never damaged any of my gear in 30 years of camping with dogs). I tend to stay away from disposable UL gear but I will probably upgrade this in the future to a UL summer pad since it's a low hanging fruit (8oz and many cubic inches saved) and a fragile summer pad isn't life or death...it's just a night of sleeping on the ground.

These days I don't mess around, I pack an R7.3 pad as soon as the temps get below 40F. You absolutely never will win the battle with conduction and convection of a poorly insulated pad to the ground and air. I think if you are going to skimp somewhere, skimp on the sleeping bag. Pad is non negotiable.

I can barely see the weekend through the trees...but it's out there

Over the last few years I've had or had to fix the following issues on bikepacking trips. To be honest, I enjoy the challenge of mechanical issues and each trip I refine my repair kit.

1. frozen/bent/broken chain, easy fix (partner bike)

2. unseated tire, defective tire, no fix... Bump bump bump

3. rack strut bolts loosened on Amtrak, strut clamp stripped on tightening, easy fix (zip ties and electrical tape) (partner bike)

4. two flats, easy fix (partner bike and my bike)

5)broken spoke, rear wheel. 1st broken spoke ever, now I know it happens. Field tensioned wheel to offset wobble, replaced wheel once home with custom built 36 (vs original 32) spoke for loaded touring. Added Kevlar Spoke to repair kit for future

6. Broken glasses frames. Challenging fix. Had to melt zip ties with a butane torch to repair cracked frame.

7)chain ring bolts loosened on partner bike... However, I likely failed to loctite them on install. My fault. Fix. Bike shop was 5 minutes down road, used non standard parts to get us another 50mi. Ultimately had to amputate small ring in field and lockout FD to upper rings.

8. broken cleat x2. Easy fix second time, had spare cleat.

9)broken lower rack mount bolt (sheared in frame on fall), rack was lightly loaded so just electrical taped the leg to the frame. Fix...two fold 1)now i reverse thread (thread through frame and bolt on outside) rack bolts and 2) preference is for axle or QR mount.

Love to see this on a non regional Instagram account. Full disclosure, as much as I love the Adirondacks, it wasn't me. Mine was Northern Finland (into the arctic circle).

Let's Go!

Last weekend most of the (remaining) gates opened in the Adirondacks. It's definitely a special time I appreciate each year. My own private forest preserve for about a month between when the snow and ice and peanut butter mud are gone, and the gates open to public vehicles.

It doesn't really change a whole lot of objectives, as by that point the trails are also dry anywhere they already weren't previously (and those that still aren't likely never will be). But it does mean we focus a bit more on single track and bit less on gated dirt/gravel roads.