Cycle4Climate

Tour: Scuol-St. Moritz

This weekend (19/20.7.2019), I rode a beautiful tour from Scuol to St. Moritz / Samedan (120km / 3000m). Amazing mountains, especially early in the morning. Beautiful gravel rides on a 2200 meter high plateau, flowy and rocky trails. Some pushing required on some steeper trail climbs to the Bernina pass (2445m). Here you find more info about the bikepacking bags I used.

Tuscany Trail: Packing list & Bikepacking Bag Review

I rode the Tuscany Trail 2019 and want to tell you about my experience with bikepacking bags. The trail runs through Tuscany from Massa to Capalbio with 550km and 9000m up. The 700 riders took between 2 days and – maybe a week. Before the trail I got a selection of bikepacking bags for testing, kindly provided by Arkel, Ortlieb, Vaude – plus I had Salsa bag systems. It was difficult to choose which combination of bags to take:

Roughly guessed, around 50% of the 700 people on the trail had Ortlieb bikepacking bags, and the rest of the people had very different bags (ranging from Apidura, Blackburn, GRAMM, Salsa, Transalp, Vaude etc.). I did not see any bags by Arkel; strangely, because I really liked them.

I chose the following setup for my 4-5 days trip:

Arkel Seatpack (15L)
Ortlieb Framebag (6L)
Ortlieb Handelbar Pack (15L)
Ortlieb Cockpit Bag (<1L)
Salsa EXP Anything Cradle, Handelbar Set
2x Salsa EXP Anything Cage on the fork

I will review the gear in another blogpost.

This is how it looked like on the Surly ECR 29+.

Well, the bike is packed: 15 kg bike plus 15 kg of gear. Most other people were traveling lighter – and on many climbs I wished I had left stuff at home. Next time, I will plan to reduce 5kg, and I will explain how.

Packlist & reducing gear

This is my packlist and the column on the rights shown in red what I would leave home the next time.

I would leave the Salsa EXP Anything Cradle at home the next time, because it was just too much stuff for the short trip. Below, you will see how I will make it. I might also leave the Salsa EXP Cages at home – or pack them with water.

Best option to reduce stuff is to sleep in hotels. You just need some changing clothes and repair stuff, which will be around 5kg luggage.

Battery packs: I navigated with my IPhone (Komoot) and also had a Sigma ROX 11 computer. The two need quite a lot of power. So I got a SIStech Solarcard, which loads a 5000 mAH battery pack within around 5-6 hours. My plan was to attach it to the bike when riding – it works, but was quite lose on the trails and often slipped aways so I stuffed it away in the end. Anyhow: We stopped for coffee or meals every 2-4 hours and loaded our phones and battery packs. So I mainly used my 5000 mAH battery pack and did not even touch my 10.000 mAH pack. Next time, 5.000 plus 10.000 mAH is sufficient for such a trip, even when navigating with a Phone.
Books: I would leave my Tolino E-book reader, which only weighs 250g including cover; but which I only used on the train (in the evenings I talked or slept).
Raingear: I took a windstopper, a rainjacket and a pair of raintrousers, which add up to almost 1kg. However, it was sunny and 30 degress+. Next time in Italy in summer: no raintrousers, maybe even no rainjacket but only the windstopper.
Tent: I took my Big Agnes 2-3 person tent, which is the smallest I have. It was good to have it, but I would consider taking a tarp or bivi-sack next time to save around 1kg
Lock: I would leave my 1kg lock at home – because I was almost always with my bike, so a very light lock would have been sufficient.
Bike bag: I use the TranZbag (600g) to pack the bike to take it on the train. It is a great bag, because you can pack your bike into it and then take it as hand-luggage – at least in Switzerland. In Italy, the conductor of the IC was rather unhappy with it, so on my way back I used regional trains. You can easily (and very cheaply) take your bike on regional trains in Italy, which I would prefer the next time. Positive is that you can also use the bag as a footprint.
Water: I had a 1L water bottle and a 0.5 bottle (in my bags as reserve). There were some parts where there were hardly any houses, but usually you could fill up your bottle by asking at some house or at some well, so 1L would have been enough.
Lights: I brought two sets of lights, but as I didn’t want to travel in the night, just one small light would have been sufficient.
Clothes: I really brought too many clothes. You just need your bike pants and a shirt. Plus changing stuff. I had around 2-3 options for changing.
Send stuff to the finish: Tuscany Trail offers for a little charge to bring stuff to the finish. So the TranZbag, clean clothes, Tolino are all candidates for sending them.

Tuscany trail: on the train

I am on my way to Tuscany to ride the Tuscany trail. I will be testing various bikepacking bags and gear and will report about it. Our idea at Getchanged is to rent out bikepacking gear at low costs so that not everyone has to buy expensive stuff that finally ends up lying the cellar 360 days per year. This is the equipment Vaude, Ortlieb and Arkel provided for testing:

And this is what I needed Tofu Ton my bike. Honestly, it required some Tetris skills to match them into the bags, which have around 50l in total.

This is the result:

So, which bags did I select and why?

I selected the Ortlieb Handelbar bag because I did not manage to install the Arkel Front bag on my Surly ECR without bending cables. It is a pity because I really wanted to test the Arkel Front bag.

I selected the Ortlieb Framebag (and not the Vaude) because it attached better to the frame (it is 5cm broad and therefore attached very well to the frame). The advantage with the Vaude one is that it would have fitted my tent poles.

I selected the Ortlieb Tuptube bag (not the Vaude one) because it is waterproof. However, it is not ideal, as the zipper is very difficult to open while cycling.

I selected the Arkel Saddlebag, wich I tested various times now and which is great (the Ortlieb one with 11l was too small). It has a very robust construction and I plan to attach my solar panel on it.

I am additionally using the Salsa EXP anything cradle with an Exped bag because I needed some more space somewhere. Since the bag is very easy to detach from the cradle, I will put my valuables in it. And I am using the Salsa cradles in the forks.

I am using the bike bag Trazbag.com, which apparently allows me to take my bike on the train as handluggage. I will have to switch trains around 4 times and will see how that works. The bike now travels with me:

I also plan to use it as footprint to protect my tent.

Finally, I got a 5w Solar Panel which is as large as a A4 sheet and I hope to power my phone with it to navigate with Komoot.

Chasing ice – great movie

You want to get inspired what all the climate change talk is about. Watch this movie, it is great and motivates for taking action:

Why Cycle4Climate?

This blog is run by Mark Starmanns. I started this blog because I strongly believe that we face a drastic urgency to act against climate change. It becomes clear that our actions so far will not be sufficient to reach the 1.5 degree aim. But I am convinced that this is necessary to prevent large social disruptions in the future. Consult the latest research on the topic.

I don’t want to be asked by my children: If you all knew about climate change, why didn’t you do anything to prevent it? I don’t want to be a „willing executor“.

I believe that action is required on every level and would like to be active. As I love to cycle and think that most cyclists love to be in the nature, I started this blog to seed ideas and inspiration for climate actions amongst cyclists around the world.

The blog will provide ideas and inspirations for action cyclists can take to help prevent climate change. It will connect interested people worldwide and examine at bike brands and gear and recommend products that are better for the climate and sustainability.

However, some of the posts are just about cycling tours.