Carrying food /supplies on a multi-day bikepacking /touring trip

[Asposium]

Due to a lack of space it does seem that most bikepacking set-ups are not suited to carrying food for more than a day or so; my last multi-day ride was a spork and a credit card

So, with your standard bikepacking set-up how many days food can you carry?

If on a longer ride (say 10 days), how would you carry supplies with absolutely no opportunity for resupply, meaning all food, (cooking) fuel, and power (for GPS, phone, camera etc) must be carried (assume water is available daily) for the duration?

Would be interesting to hear people's thoughts.

[whitestone]

It is one definite limitation of compact bikepacking "soft" luggage. It's also why our American cousins always seem to have massive amounts of kit and large bags to accommodate it, when you are over a day's riding from resupply you tend to need to carry stuff.

I reckon I'd be able to carry three days' worth of supplies without needing to invest in anything new. I might be a bit hungry at the end! For ten days: I'd start to consider a rear rack and panniers or possibly a trailer of some sort. It would definitely depend on the nature of the trip though.

[Richpips]

I'd reckon around a kilo of food per day. In weight and volume that quickly adds up.

[composite]

For breakfasts, I used to put a large portion of ready brek in a zip lock bag along with a few spoons of powdered milk, then just pour in enough hot water for your taste and eat from the bag. You can spice this up a bit with dried fruit, I used to like dried cranberries. For dinner, I would often do the same with packet couscous and again dried fruit to add some extra flavour.

You can rinse out the bags, hold on to them, then when you do resupply you can often ditch a lot of packaging that takes up room and reuse your ziplock bags.,

I also made a lot of the recipes from a book called "Feedzone portables", which gave me lots of other ideas. The book tries to move beyond the normal flapjacks and brownies for portable food. One of my favourites was baking an egg in a muffin tray and sprinkling on bacon and grated cheese as it cooked. Once cooled they can be wrapped in foil and then used as little food parcels.

[whitestone]

I'd reckon around a kilo of food per day. In weight and volume that quickly adds up.

The old formula for military rations was 2lbs per man per day so not too dissimilar. You are going to want somewhere north of 4000kcals per day. Carbs and protein are roughly 4kcal/g while fat is 9kcal/g. Most "high energy" foodstuffs are somewhere in the 5kcal/g range so that's 800g.

Using nuts (assuming you aren't allergic to them) is a good way (weigh ) of boosting caloric density as they are high in fats.

Repacking just about everything is a must for getting the volume down. The commercial meals come in a foil pouch that's as much to ensure long shelf life in the shops as protecting the meals themselves. A quick decant into a ziplock bag isn't going to affect the quality over a short period of time.

Over a period of ten days it's a challenge to provide variety. I'd be inclined to have some meals that were "fresh" but that requires a more substantial means of cooking rather than just "boil in the bag".

Carrying: a full frame bag as wide as you can fit in your frame and still pedal is probably a must. Fuel in a bottle on the underside of the downtube - I'd want it separate from the food when you are so reliant on what you are carrying.

[Asposium]

thanks for the guidance so far, more interested in how people would go about carrying the supplies for a mutli-day trip away from resupply.

i appreciate i am fairly new to bikepacking, so not at the expert level of some here.

don't see much way of avoiding a front rack and panniers at the moment

[benp1]

I reckon I could get 10 days food for bikepacking but it would be heavy and unnecessary as none of my trips are that long and mostly involve pubs and cafes!

But, I could squeeze a fair bit of food onto my fork legs and a rucksack. Nuts, trail mix, snack bars, dehydrated meals and instant noodles. Plus things like pork pies, salamis, mini cheese things

[Bearbonesnorm]

I can usually pack all 'camping gear' in a front and rear bag. That gives the option of a frame bag + feed bags + additional front bag + TT bag for food. Not quite sure how much that lot would hold but I'm thinking you'd certainly get a good few days of dehydrated stuff in there. I'm probably also helped by the fact that I don't tend to eat much ... quite how Mike would go on, I dread to think.

[whitestone]

thanks for the guidance so far, more interested in how people would go about carrying the supplies for a mutli-day trip away from resupply.

i appreciate i am fairly new to bikepacking, so not at the expert level of some here.

don't see much way of avoiding a front rack and panniers at the moment

I suppose it goes along much the same lines as taking any "gear" whether for bikepacking, backpacking, canoeing, etc:

1. Lay it all out
2. Think there's too much
3. Take stuff out and swap things around
4. Go back to point 2.

Think along the lines of "reduce and repack" then see what sort of volume, which is the restricting factor, you need. I'd try and keep heavy items off the front of the bike as that will adversely affect handling.

Using things like Anything Cages/Gorilla Cages on the forks for light and bulky items such as sleeping mat, sleeping bag, etc will free up room elsewhere for supplies.

An interesting question and subsequent thought experiment

Edit: This route https://bikepacking.com/routes/ruta-seis-miles-sur/ suggests having to carry 12 days' worth of food so might be worth looking at the shots of the bike.

[voodoo_simon]

Nuts is an interesting one, have tried them in winter trips as they’re supposed to be good as Bob says. However, they didn’t give me the energy I needed at the time, felt tired and lacking energy.

Fast forward a year or so later and I was reading a an article on a pro-longed winter Sweden trip and the author also took nuts and felt the same as I did. Turns out from his description, his body wasn’t used to processing nuts etc, so it didn’t know what to do with them (in the simplest terms) and so, reverted back to his normal diet habits and started to feel much better.

Being used to a diet of biscuits, chocolate etc, I’ve since reverted back to eating ‘crap’ on trips and have since felt much better fueled.

In short, guess I’m saying get used to the food you’ll be taking

[PaulB2]

I normally carry 2 emergency meals and snacks, so basically a days supply on my standard setup. I've used a short travel fs for my bikepacking trips so far (take the bike you have and all that) so my setup normally includes a small 10l rucksack for water and bulky but light stuff. If I put on all my feed bags then carrying 3-4 days of food / fuel wouldn't be a problem.

Any longer than that I'd probably want to switch bikes to something that can use a bigger seat pack and has a bigger main triangle. If I use my gravel bike I'd lose maybe 3-4 litres on the front due to the narrower bars but would gain 8 on a bigger seat pack and 3-4 on the main triangle. Gorilla cages and a full frame bag would give me more flexibility for getting the weight down lower at the cost of making the bike harder to manhandle.

[Lazarus]

there are no ideal solutions as its a lot of weight and volume to add to a set up as you are going to need about 1 kg of food per day to get 4-5000 calories

Basically a rucksack - bulky items in here not heavy] and food in other bags - Fork cages, ruck sac, frame bag whatever you prefer
For ten days i think you are going to need a rack as its a minimum of 10 kg of food- you might get it in a frame back and it not rip but i have never tried.
You are basically into touring territory with these weights though.

[RIP]

"* I would say what but I get told off if i mention it"

10 days no resupply? A blinking great Extrawheel trailer for me I reckon.

[Alpinum]

Some thoughts fuelled by own experience:

Most food I once carried by bike was for 9 days. It was only for about 100 km as I had the opportunity to send 3 days worth of food ahead.
This is where almost all of the food was carried:


I also had a small rucksack with me for lightweight bulky stuff. Depending on the days ahead, I would swap the light and bulky stuff (rucksack) with heavy and dense (bike) around in order to being able to carry/push the bike more easily.



Going again to ride roughly the same route. Will be travelling with a bigger tent, bigger stove and my girlfriend so we'll likely be covering less distance. We're going to use our steel HT with Tubus Vega, Drybag ontop and King Many Thing cages, full frame bags, down tube cages, handle bar bags. No rucksacks as the route will be easy to ride and have only "smooth" single tracks, but mostly gravel roads of varying quality.

Power on my first biking trip across Iceland (photos) which had a bunch of km's with no resupply options came solely from a battery pack - 10000 mAh. I could've done with less.
For this next trip we're using our everyday bikes on which we have dyno hubs. I've been using the "Forumslader" for many years now and have ordered a second one, so we are completely independent of power.

For a big trip in November/December I'll be carrying food/fuel for 30+ days, including up to about 14 L of water.
No chance in my point of view to do this without racks. I'm trying to get around a front rack by using 2x triple Mount per fork leg, but not so sure it'll be enough.

The tough part is when you come from long distance riding and visit a remote place - there's no pizza, no bar food, no café at some point(s) of your trip. No petrol station, no Spar, no Morrisons, no Tescos.
This means you can't sit down somewhere and dig in. And then dig in some more. It's very, very different if you can ride for 2 - 3 days, eat a bit too Little perhaps, but then end the 3 day in a village where you can have 2 - 3 meals and 2 deserts and start the next day completely refilled/refuelled or if you just have a pouch filled with 800 kcal of food and bar of chocolate, but not more.

I've done many wilderness trips of 20+ days with no resupply option (well, I could've have had a bush pilot make a Food drop, but think that's ridiculous) hiking, mostly in subarctic climates (just about any you can find in Köppen's classification) where you burn through even more energy and I always get away with a minimum of 650 g of calorie dense food (3500 kcal), despite 10 h hiking/day. Of course I lose some kg of body mass.

Yet if I'm on the bike riding/pushing for 10 h/day, 650 g or roughly 3300 kcal/day is nowhere near enough. That's typically been the case with about 1250 m vert gain in 100 km. 800 g/day is a minimum adding up to 4100 kcal/day.

If the ratio is at 4700 m vert gain in 100 km, loads of pushing/carrying, super steep and tech descents and I go for 10 h, no matter how slow I go - I need at least 1 kg/day.

Another thing to consider with fuelling for bikepacking for 10 days or more, is the frame's rigidity.
Steel and titanium are comfy and all, but generally not ideal for larger loads as they become rather soft. There's a reason why proper touring bike frames are so heavy.

So you need to use stronger tubing (thicker sidewalls/larger diameter), or else the frame will feel like cooked pasta when loaded.

I load my Krampus regularly with up to about 40 kg (car free life...) and it feels seriously soft. Even with 20 kg it feels soft, that's a total system weight of about 117 kg.
On a bikepacking trip on my own that'd mean food for 10 days and 5 L of water. When riding with my girlfriend, food for 10 days and 3 L of water. Upwards from that I don't like the way it rides. I don't like soft (comfy some say…) frames anyway.

That - for example – was the main reason why I sold my Muru ti fatbike frame and had a custom one made. The Muru was already soft with winter luggage and food/fuel for 4 days at probably about 110 – 115 kg total weight. I wanted a bike that feels like the Muru with a total system weight of 110 - 115 kg, yet when loaded with 150 kg. That's 25 % difference. The Muru weighed in at 1700 g. The new frame is a bit longer and by a suggested plus of 100 g (total frame weight of 1800 g) the new frame would have to be 2250 g to roughly give the feel when loaded. Luckily, the frame is just exactly that weight.

Many things I stated are of course subjective but I may give you an idea where my thoughts during trip planning and also in retrospective go to and come from.


Good stuff, I just had read the opening post. Started writing. Ran off. Came back and wrote the rest and realised many had answered before and hey, we all basically go by the same numbers.

[Alpinum]

Nuts is an interesting one, have tried them in winter trips as they’re supposed to be good as Bob says. However, they didn’t give me the energy I needed at the time, felt tired and lacking energy.

Fast forward a year or so later and I was reading a an article on a pro-longed winter Sweden trip and the author also took nuts and felt the same as I did. Turns out from his description, his body wasn’t used to processing nuts etc, so it didn’t know what to do with them (in the simplest terms) and so, reverted back to his normal diet habits and started to feel much better.

Being used to a diet of biscuits, chocolate etc, I’ve since reverted back to eating ‘crap’ on trips and have since felt much better fueled.

In short, guess I’m saying get used to the food you’ll be taking

Well it's very unlikely to be the nuts (you're not allergic are you ) but the fat. Macadamia - I love them, they have an incredible energy density, but they would be of very little use, if my body wasn't well used to get energy out of fats (yet I don't live ketogene).

Ketogene diet will absolutely boost the way your body responds to fats. From there on you can start to pack seriously energy dense food. So dense, some think it's gross.


Energy gel? Win Force Ultra Energy Complex? GU Energy?

Mayonnaise!

That said, I can't wait to munch on crackers with hardfiskur (dried fish) and mayonnaise during the upcoming double traverse of Iceland. Tasty and dense energy food

[Asposium]

Some thoughts fuelled by own experience:
........

Thanks Alpinum.

Certainly lots to ponder.

[whitestone]

Gian's covered a lot and given that he's actually done it ...

You've basically three options.

1. Bikepacking bags plus extra bags like Gorilla Cages along with a rucksack.

2. Racks and panniers.

3. Trailer.

All have pluses and minuses, it just depends where you plan on going, what you intend to ride when there and how much you are willing to spend - A Bob trailer is several hundred pounds for example and if flying you need to consider how to get it there and back.

[Alpinum]

Some thoughts fuelled by own experience:
........

Thanks Alpinum.

Certainly lots to ponder.

Welcome.
The probably most important part is staying fuelled. Again, if you come home from a eg 3 day trip, thinking the food you had with you was enough, but eat ton's and ton's in the following 2 days to normalise - you will definately be suffering on a 10 day trip. Perhaps doable, but painful and slow and miserable.
I've been there many times and felt really stupid, just for the sake of saving another 1 kg or 2...

Also consider putting on some body fat if you're skinny. 7000 kcal/kg, perfectly distributed. There's no better way to carrying energy around.

[voodoo_simon]

Well it's very unlikely to be the nuts (you're not allergic are you ) but the fat. Macadamia - I love them, they have an incredible energy density, but they would be of very little use, if my body wasn't well used to get energy out of fats (yet I don't live ketogene).

Yeah, that’s a better way of explaining it. I’m so much more used to processing sugar than fats, so I now know to stick with that setup

[Alpinum]

Well it's very unlikely to be the nuts (you're not allergic are you ) but the fat. Macadamia - I love them, they have an incredible energy density, but they would be of very little use, if my body wasn't well used to get energy out of fats (yet I don't live ketogene).

Yeah, that’s a better way of explaining it. I’m so much more used to processing sugar than fats, so I now know to stick with that setup

Yeah, there's alot pro carbohydrates and alot pro fats.
When it comes to high altitudes though, CH's win outright.

Before I rode my first bikepacking event which went on for 5 days a former pro roadie who runs my local bike shop said something like

"training is important, but no use at all if you don't get nutrition right. Don't make any experiments. Go with what you know works for you".

Thankfully, with the tame pace I rode, I could eat anything I liked. Yet I used electrolytes I hadn't tried before and they upset my otherwise robust tummy and gave heart burn on the last 2 days. So he was right with experiments and I reduced it to food and forgot that drinks can mess things up too.

Now I just use salt sticks

[lune ranger]

Panniers would be my choice. You may only need to add a pair of front panniers onto a rear rack to boost your capacity. You could leave your other bags in place.
In the past I did slot of hard off road with a two or four pannier set up. That includes Iceland and Nepal (Annapurna circuit). Contrary to modern thinking you can ride almost anything with panniers as compared to soft bags. The big exception is very close vegetation on single tracks and deeply rutted trails.
Trailers are an ok option if you know there will be no major hike a bike or carries involved. I used one for s trip in the mountains in Norway and found it less easy to get on with than panniers.

[Alpinum]

So, with your standard bikepacking set-up how many days food can you carry?

If on a longer ride (say 10 days), how would you carry supplies with absolutely no opportunity for resupply, meaning all food, (cooking) fuel, and power (for GPS, phone, camera etc) must be carried (assume water is available daily) for the duration?

Would be interesting to hear people's thoughts.

Whilst this isn't quite my standard bikepacking setup, I went on a multi week trip last November/December where I had to be self sufficient for > 30 days and carry water for up to 4 days. Initially it took some getting used to, but thanks to a TLS approach, my bike wasn't that heavy after all. I regularly meet touring cyclists who consider 40 - 50 kg normal, despite riding in non-remote areas.
The heaviest the bike was, was during an initial stage where I had to carry lots of water. Adding all up to about 65 kg total weight. Yes, bloody heavy, but still (for me) light enough to be able to handle it when riding, but also on foot.

Now I know that 5 weeks self sufficiency can be done fairly well. The amount of water I had to carry (thankfully only at the beginning), would've meant another 2.5 weeks of food in a non desert environment.
Add in some climbing, some soft tracks and off track riding/pushing and 50 km/d were absolutely okay to cover. Some rough maths and tadaaaa, you can cover more than 2500 km completely self sufficient with the weight I hauled around. But that's not the limit.













That said, I'm in contact with another Swiss expeditionscyclist (yeah, 'tis betterer than ultracycling), who not too long ago, was self sufficient for round about 90 days! Yet, they covered about the same distance as I did in 30 days, mainly due to more demanding terrain (when I had sandy and rocky segments on my route, they had snow and mud) and also, but to a lesser degree, by going with a classic touring setup, heavier gear, narrow tyres etc.

They pushed their bikes mostly... We've been much in touch lately because he too found, that he could've done the traverse in shorter time and with more riding.

So... given you can get water at least once a day, up to 55 days self sufficiency will still allow you to ride up 10 % or steeper tracks, ride across fields with baby head sized rocks, soft sand, push it up steep climbs etc. This includes gear for staying warm down to -20 °C and a tent strong enough to withstand Atacama winds at 6000 m.

Probably the limit (of enjoyment) to handle a bike riding it and pushing it will be somewhere round about 70 - 75 kg or so.
15 kg for the bike, 8 kg for the gear, 2 L water and we have 50 kg for food and fuel to play with. That'll do for about 60 days. 3000 km of complete self sufficiency with gear for harsh environment.
Quite amazing what can be done with a bicycle.

[lune ranger]

As far as cooking is concerned for extended trips without resupply you are going to be best off with a pressurised petrol stove - MSR Whisperlight, Simmerlight, Drogonfly etc.
Although the stoves are heavier than gas or alcohol you get great efficiency from your fuel. Depending on how you use it you may get weeks of cooking out of a litre of petrol.
But days out of a litre of alcohol.
No empty canisters to carry out as with gas and you can know exactly what your fuel state is.
That said - if the style of trip and area you are travelling in lends itself to it - a wood stove is the ultimate because you never need to carry fuel.

[Asposium]

Hi,
Do you have a side view of the loaded bike?
What was the daily food?
Interesting to read more.
Thanks.

[shutupthepunx]

great replies.

EDIT: im aware this doesn't answer your question. but it might be of use as to help keep food weight down.

have a look at this document from andrew skurka https://airtug.com/wp-content/uploads/b ... g-food.pdf (which seems to be a previous version of the recipe book, "which features 12 extensively trail-tested breakfasts and dinners" that you get if you sign up to his newsletter here https://andrewskurka.com/newsletter-signup/)

anyway this includes a bunch of stuff but the following should be of interest, albeit americanified.

Rations:
Challenges
Amounts
Types
Coffee

Recipes:
How many recipes do you need?
A case for soups and gruels
Ingredient information & sourcing
Cheesy Potatoes
Oatmeal with Fixings
Beans & Rice with Fritos & Cheese
Curry Couscous
Polenta & Peppers
Pesto Noodles
Thai Peanut Noodles