So… The other day some friends and i decided to try mountain bike touring, also know as, bikepacking. S240 style. For those of you that do not know, an S240 is a sub 24 hr overnight trip, Grant Peterson, from Rivendell coined the term
We started from just North and East of North Bend, Wa. I would like to say we rode out there, but we drove. It is hard the ride 35 mile after work and then ride single track before it gets dark. And then get up in the morning to ride back and make it to work on time. Anyhow, we chose the middle fork of the snoqualmie river trail. Many of the trails in this area are closed to mtn. biking and we repect those rules.
We wound up getting to the trailhead kinda late, which left us with not much day light left. The trail we chose was all single track, no forest road, not terribly technical, but it had its parts and there were definitly section that were unridable do the river erosion. We road for about 1.5 hrs and found a great spot right on the river. There was only one problem…
Some gear got left on the trail. We wound up riding past daylight hours and had to stop to and put on lights. At camp one of us reliezed that our back pack was missing. Where could it be?? So we load back up and head back the way we came. We had a good idea that the back was set down when the lights went on. So in the dark we scoured the forest floor for a black (convienent) back pack. We found it right where we thought, just took awhile in the dark. Seems that when you ride mostly in the city without a back on you forget when you should have one.
So went back to camp, drink whiskey, and dunk our selves in the river!!
We rose early the get back to the city in time for work. I felt horrible and blame it on the high quality safeway deli sandwhich. Overall it was great and i hope to do a lot more of it. I also got to design a new bag, a frame bag. It worked well but needs some refinement, I also made the harness that is being used to attach the tarp/sleeping roll to the Handle bars. In addition I attached a small dry bag to my saddle for my sleeping bag. It worked ok but will likely use something else next time.
Maybe there will be something new on the Swift site this spring!
Gears
