Are you gearing up for a cycle touring or bikepacking adventure, but do not know where to begin with gathering all the essential bike touring gear?! Well, we’ve got you covered with this post on the Ultimate Bike Touring Gear Checklist for cycle touring and bikepacking from ArboursAbroad! We spent three weeks cycling down the Pacific Coast Highway from Seattle to San Francisco and know what works and doesn’t work as far as the gear required to get you through a cyle touring bike trip! There are things we would deem as ‘touring bike essentials’, other items as ‘should bring’, and additional pieces of kit that are just ‘luxury’!
We have put together this bike touring gear checklist for you to guide your preparation in any trip that spans from just one night on your bike to a multi-week or even multi-month cycle touring trip!
Here is the post on the Ultimate Bike Touring Gear Checklist for Cycle Touring and Bikepacking!!
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How to Pack for Bike Touring
Research: Type of Trip, Location, & Time of Year
To begin packing for your bike touring trip, you must begin your research! So… good job! You’ve landed at the right place and you’re doing your bike touring gear research! But, you must first decide on what kind of trip you are going to do.
Type of Cycle Touring Trip
Will you be cycling down the coast of the Pacific Northwest like we did when cycling from Seattle to San Francisco, down the Carretera Austral like our friend Maarten did in South America, through mostly cities and towns, through trails in the High Sierras, or a small mixture of it all?
Considering what type of trip will largely influence what kind of bicycle you will choose or how you will modify your bike to get you from point A to point B and the kind of bikepacking accessories you acquire for your trip!
We did a little bit of it all when we cycled the 1,000 miles from Seattle to San Francisco and can say that our bike touring gear suited us quite well for all the occasions! Glad we did our bike touring gear research beforehand…instead of just winging it!
Location
Next, you will need to decide on your location for your cycle touring adventure. This will have a huge impact on the bike touring gear you’ll be needing to buy, source, or make! If you’ll be in the frosty tundra of Alaska, you may need to consider fat boy tires and much heavier duty warm clothing. Whereas if you are in a more tropical location of Central America, you may only need skinny tires and shorts and tank top!
Time of Year
Finally, you will need to consider the time of year you are wanting to do your cycle tour trip. Will it be the rainy season and require everything on your bike to be waterproof? Will there be cold weather cycling causing you to wear gloves, or even worse requiring you to have special hand shields mounted to your handlebars?
Just do your research and practically consider each scenario before winging it and not being fully prepared for your cycle touring trip!
Now to Packing
Once you have decided on the type of trip you will be taking, the location of your cycle touring adventure, and the time year you will be doing it in, you will need to start gathering all the gear required for your bike touring trip! Acquiring all the necessary bicycle touring gear isn’t the most fun part of the process, but it is essential to the journey. And the best part about gathering all of it is, you are getting one step closer to taking off as you check off each item from the list!
Bonus
After we had done all the research necessary for cycling down the PCH from Seattle to San Francisco, we realized after doing a large backpacking trip in South America we already had a lot of the gear required for such a trip. There is a lot of carry-over from backpacking to bike touring! Everything we were reading and all the information gathered from others who have done a trip like this were all referencing the same backpacking gear we already had! That really made for this trip to turn into a budget bike touring adventure!
So if you already have a bunch of backpacking and hiking gear or you have friends that have backpacking gear, you can repurpose it into bike touring gear. Ultimately giving you the best budget bike touring gear! However, if you must purchase cycle touring gear, then there are a few ways of doing this!
Budget Bike Touring Gear Options
Borrow From Friends
This is probably the cheapest method of putting together your bike touring gear inventory. Although it is the cheapest or free-est, it holds the highest liability. If you ruin it or it gets lost/stolen, then you’re the one who is ultimately responsible for it and will have to replace it. Not the most budget-friendly in the end!
Make It Yourself
This option may be the most satisfying. Finding a need and creating it yourself! When we were preparing for our trip, we were trying to be the most budget-conscious yet most genius at the same time. So when we needed some panniers to hold everything, I reached out to my dad. He said he had some old motorcycle saddlebags lying around that we could repurpose into bicycle panniers to hold our bike touring gear! My dad had a friend that did industrial-scale sewing and we got to work. He secured some heavy-duty plastic and metal hooks to mount directly to the rear bike rack. We then added a couple bungee cords and boom, we had a homemade pannier bag for the bike trip!
We also used our handy dandy homemade soda can stove! See how we made it here!
Then, we had a friend join along the trip and he was legitimately backpacking through the USA and didn’t want all the bike touring gear to go along with him on the bike. He opted for just a bike and a trailer. The trailer held his backpacking backpack and that’s all. A friend and I sourced a couple of old children’s bikes, some metal from a local metal shop, and used his dad’s welder to piece together a bike trailer. It had its ups and downs, but ultimately it did its job and was amazing!
Garage Sales
You never know what you will find, but sometimes you’ll find exactly what you’re looking for. We have found water bottles, cycling shirts, cheap road bikes, etc. So keep your eyes peeled for those sales in your community!
REI Garage Sales
These are always something good to keep an eye out for when looking to gear up for cycle packing! REI periodically has a garage sale of all the items that have been returned. We have bought some awesome items that were returned for no good reason and you get them at a major discount! They have everything that would be on the showroom floor. You just need to arrive super early to get the first come first serve perk of choosing your items before everything has been ransacked!
Check here for REI Garage Sales
Goodwill
Another place to find perfect items that have a ton of life still in them. You never know what you’ll find, but it’s always worth checking to see what they have! We have found perfectly good cycling shorts with limited wear on them, cycling shoes with the SPD clips included for just $20 bucks. Even full bikes that we would purchase if we didn’t already have what we needed! Don’t pass this place by!
Costco
You must be a member to even enter, but they have amazing deals on camp clothes, bikes, camping gear, and many other essential bike touring gear you would never think about! We bought our hammock, camp clothes, water bottle, raincoats, and cooking gear from here and have been thoroughly satisfied with it all. The great thing about Costco is their amazing return policy! They take back everything…even food!
Amazon
Everyone already knows you can buy any and all things on Amazon, so that’s the wonderful thing about shopping here. Also, we enjoy the cheap prices and reviews that come along with shopping at Amazon.com! However, if you’re not a big fan of shopping from a huge monopoly retailer, then we understand you choosing to buy from somewhere else!
Ultimate Bike Touring Gear Checklist
Bike Gear
- Bicycle (preferably a touring bicycle but a road bike or even a mountain bike will do)
- Cycle computer
- Bicycle Bell
- Comfortable saddle
- Shoe clips or cages
- Pannier rack
- Panniers (the ones we used) or Panniers (these for more rain protection)
- 2 Water bottles
- 2 Water bottle holders
- Frame bag (add a handlebar bag if you need more storage space)
Tire Repair
- Small bike pump
- 2 extra tubes (for your specific bike)
- Patch kit
- Tire levers
Tools
Wearable Cycling Gear
- Helmet
- Sunglasses or other eye protection
- Gloves
- Cycle jersey or merino wool top
- Windbreaker
- Raincoat
- Padded cycle touring shorts
- Arm warmers or leg warmers for colder weather environments
- 2 Merino wool socks
- Cycle touring shoes or clips
- Sunscreen
- Chapstick
Bike Extras
- Cycling headlight
- Cycling taillight
- Saddlebag for tools and tire repair kit
- U-lock & cable
- Spare spokes
- Phone holder
- Reflective strips for safety
- Hi-Vis safety vest
- Toilet paper & baggies for trash
- Waterproof bags to protect equipment
- Guidebook/Map
- Wallet/cash/credit or debit card/I.D.
- Bungy cords/tie-downs
- High energy gels and bars
Camp Gear
- Cycle Touring Tent* (small, compressible, lightweight) *2 person
- Tent stakes
- Guy lines
- Footprint
- Sleeping bag
- Sleeping pad
- Luci light – Get a review of it here.
- Camp chair
Camp Kitchen
- Stove
- Pot set
- Mug
- Spork
- Fuel
- Firestarter
- Nalgene water bottle
- Hydroflask
- Aeropress Coffee Maker– Get a review of it here.
- Dr. Bronner’s Soap
- Hand sanitizer
- Food
Final Thoughts
When assembling your bike touring gear, there are many things to consider like price, quality, brand name, etc. But just keep it simple! Don’t go for the most expensive, unless you are planning on making cycle touring more of a routine! Go to your local secondhand shops and buy for cheap, repurpose old items laying around the house, or ask to borrow from a friend! Your wallet will like it and so will the environment!
We hope that this ultimate bike touring gear checklist will help guide you in preparing for any type of cycle tour, bikepacking, or any bike tour you choose! Just make sure to do your research so that you can get the right piece of kit for the right type of trip, location, and time of year you choose!
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate in reaching out to us in the comment section below or via email! We look forward to hearing from you! Cheers
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