Bikepacking vs Touring
What is the differences between bikepacking and bike touring?
Anyone who is a hiker that is getting into biking or a biker getting into camping, this question rings true across many articles: is there a difference?
These two terms bikepacking and touring are often interchangeably used and many may even think they are the same thing. To these individuals I mentally scream.. “NO!”
Most of the time the mistake is made with one claiming the term bikepacking instead of touring. Rarely I hear the mistake made the other way around.
If a team leader and his/her band of jersey 700s buy panniers and ride up the 101 coast with tents and sleeping bags for 800 miles. Im sorry, not to crush your efforts of sounding cool or take away from the allure doing such a bike trip no matter how cool. This is not a ‘bikepacking’ trip.
Yes, admittedly there are some similarities between these activities. Mainly that they both involved carry goods on your bike as camping gear, rations of food, and other items one would take along during a extended cycling trip. The difference is not in what one carries but how they plan on traveling.
Touring is a term used to denote multiple days of racing. Road bikers would carry goods with them on their bikes. This was an aid to see they not only reach the finish line as extra bike goodies as patches and tools but what they needed physically as food and place to rest. Today as has become rarely apart of races it is most commonly use to identify multiple days of general riding on the road. So the style of riding touring is multiple days travel by road.
Not popularized until recent years, Bikepacking is mixture of touring and backpacking. Where backpacking is extended over nights hiking in the back country with the things you pack in and out. Bikepacking denoted the impression that the biking journey would involve mostly (or at lest some element) of backcountry. Backcountry means riding over rocks, through trees, across water ways, riding over natural feature unlike roads, and more encounters with hikers then cars. Most of the time bikepacking is done with a mountain bike style but there have been instances where people have bikepacked with hybrid/cross bikes and even unicycles.
Whatever types of bike is used, the differential between bikepacking and touring come to how you are riding not necessarily what you are riding. Some may like climbing on lose gravel with their fat tires and other like to speed alongs highway on par with some cars. Both of them are enjoyable. Thoughts of any multi-day trip via cycle would bring a smile to any true to heart biker.
For those that want a finite formula to determine whether a trip would fall in which category… There is no formula. If a trip is 52% along a high frequented road in California then the next 48% head through areas of the high sierras where some roads turn dirt and 15 miles from the nearest gas station. Truly, it is anyones call. Some would say it is bikpacking due to any element of back country in the mountain. Someone else may say it is technically touring because the routes were all on roads.
Calm down.
Do not let theses complex theoretically ideal regarding cycle terms end a friendship or fuel your ego for debates. Whatever style of ride you want to do and are doing on the trip, whether you plan it or you take unfortunate alternative detour, will determine if it is a touring or a bikepacking trip.
Hopefully this was helpful.
If not, fight on.
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