Bikepacking bags
In 2021 I fell in love with multiday bikepacking excursions. Not only for the cycling adventure, but also for the design challenge of the extremely specific gear required.
So far, I’ve built a frame bag, fork mounted bags, and 3D printed a stem mounted cargo rack and fork mounts with multiple threaded attachment points.
My full suspension trail bike may not be the ideal bikepacking rig, but as they say, the best bikepacking bike is the one you already own!
Patterning is done in Adobe Illustrator using a photograph of the front triangle. A ruler taped near the downtube makes this a quick and easy process - exactly the same way Rockgeist builds their custom frame bags.
Daisy-chained webbing runs along the perimeter of the bag for perfectly located mounting straps using Velcro One wrap.
The bags have proven themselves on two trips so far, a 100 mile loop through central Connecticut, and the northern half of the Green Mountain Gravel Growler, a 126 mile loop on mostly gravel, class IV roads, and a few miles of singletrack in northern Vermont, hitting as many breweries as possible along the way.
Next steps include refining the fork mount system and building a full set of bags for my new Salsa Mukluk fatbike. Looking forward to more adventures in 2022!
