From a Never Bike Tourer to Bikepacking in the Adirondacks: The Full Circle Journey of Exploration and Discovery

Adirondack bikepacking routes I created as of Dec 31, 2025

Back in 2020 during Covid I took my bikes to Arkansas to visit family. I hadn't ridden in Arkansas in 20 years and I was excited to ride there, even if it was a long way from my old stomping grounds. I got back from a ride and a family member asked me "with all the outdoors stuff you do, have you ever done any bike touring? Would you consider it?"

Without hesitation I said, "no, absolutely not." The reason I gave was I do a lot of slow deliberate wilderness type activities and to me, riding was about going fast. 50mph descents with my hair on fire. It was about cranking through turns and maintaining a high average speed and crushing sprints where I felt the need to. Every ride was an individual time trial. I was enjoying picking off Strava KOMs (I'm a good sprinter so those flat KOMs are actually achievable) and just having fun riding. No need to burden myself with a ton of gear and turn every ride into a multi-day planning and packing event. 

Not too long after that I got more into gravel riding. Despite what the bike industry tells us, gravel isn't a new thing, when I was a student at the University of Arkansas we often rode gravel on mountain bikes, usually to bridge single track sections, sometimes to get to trails in the Ozark NF or Arkansas State Parks from campus, and after college I rode a lot of gravel on my hard tail because my back just couldn't handle the multi-use (hiking trail) single track that was the norm in New York. Plus, gravel was that sweet spot between MTB and road. It was out in nature, quieter roads, sometimes it could be chunky or even mildly technical (Vermont Class 4 roads are a great example of this), but it was still spinning gears and riding fast. 

Ted King on a paved section of the 1000 mile Arkansas High Country Race in 2020 (credit bikepacking.com)

 

I'm not sure how or why (besides targeted Google advertising, of course) but I saw the Arkansas High Country Race and Vermonter Ted King had won it. I thought that looked cool. They rode fast (relatively speaking), they traveled fairly light, and they looked like they were still riding hard. It erased my pre-conceptions of a bike tourer having 100L of panniers filled with heavy cast iron. In my mind, bike touring was essentially backpacking in the 1970s. Except, like backpacking, bike touring has evolved and with it came the ultralight bikepacking. This isn't much different than the evolution of backpacking where people went from cast iron to JetBoils with titanium mugs, or 10lb canvas tents to 1lb frameless tarp tents, and external framed packs to carry that load to lighter, more compact and nimble internal frame packs. 

Bikepacking is a volatile term. Sometimes it's used to blanket describe riding a bike to multiple points over multiple days. To others its covering the same terrain in the same style you would backpack. Too me, bikepacking is anywhere you NEED to use a water filter. So gravel roads or even paved roads in the middle of nowhere can be bikepacking. Bike touring is anywhere you simply fill your water from a hose, fountain machine, or buy bottles. I realize people can and will endlessly debate what it means to them, and I'm not here to tell you what it is or it isn't. That's up to you. I once debated someone that said if you weren't literally pushing or even carrying your bike for most of the trip, it was bike touring. To me, if I'm carrying my bike half the trip, I'd rather leave it home and go backpacking. I didn't buy a bike, deal with all the mechanical nuance and cost, just to need a pair of hiking boots. I want to ride it!

(credit bikepacking.com and Restrap)

So how did I get from "hell no" to "maybe I'll try it" to "I'm all in" and now creating routes in the vast Adirondack Wilderness? Well, sadly my dog Colvin, died in 2023. In his early years we did some mountain biking, but by the time I got back into riding, even though he was still bagging difficult peaks for a 10yo dog in 2020, it was too much to ask of him to ride with me. His final years were spent hiking, sometimes very hard peaks or routes which he enjoyed, and that was best for him. I'd ride on rest days for him but we focused on getting him out into the mountains and local trails as much as possible. About 7 months later in the summer of 2023 I got my next gen trail dog, Marshall. By 2024 I realized this was the time to get back into mountain biking and off-road bikepacking and make use of Marshall's endless energy. He is my first truly high energy dog in the sense he doesn't have a chill switch. It's go, go, go. 

You have a small window (about 5 years, ages 2-7) to ride hard with your dog. Hard? This absolutely doesn't mean abuse them with overuse, it just means where they can ride* day to day and recover optimally. Where riding at 20mph for short stretches and 15-30mi days are not pushing them to the limit. After that window you need to start considering the dogs recovery much more, mayber sticking to more technical single track where you are riding much slower and even moving on to a cart and bike touring. I will say people tend to overthink how fast a MTBer is riding. Typically average speed is under 10mph for the day, usually between 6-10mph for single track trails. That is a 6-10min mile, and trust me, your dog isn't working that hard in proper temps running 10 min miles over a typical 10-20mi day if they are already properly conditioned.  A 10min mile is 250min or about 4 hours of activity over an 6-8 hour day of riding if you stop and smell the roses, filter water, go for a swim, and take some photos.  Again, not a serious strain on a properly conditioned dog in the optimal age range. Add in a backpack like the K9 Sportsack and you can ride probably around 40-45mi on the high end if you bag the dog for long gravel descents, pavement, and long flat stretches of gravel. 

*when I use the term ride, I'm riding and the dog is running or the dog may be in the Sportsack, but he's never at the wheel, my dog training skills only go so far and he loves to run as much as I love to bike

Well, that is the backstory on how I got into bikepacking and why I began developing routes in the Adirondack Forest Preserve. I'll be posting those routes here along with maps, route GPX, photos and trip reports. 

As a side note: I've gotten some mild natured hate from some gate keepers in the Adirondack cycling community. Don't ruin a good thing for us was the consensus. But I promise you this, in 3 years of Adirondacks bikepacking, mostly on weekends, I have NEVER seen another cyclist either day riding or bikepacking. NOT. ONE. What that tells me is not only are ADK backpackers a secretive bunch (afterall, to get mad means you do ride, but to see no evidence means you keep it quiet), but they may not even exist at all in numbers necessary to prove they do. I guess what I'm saying is I understand the sentiment but I don't believe sharing my routes is going to change bikepacking in the Adirondacks dramatically in the near future. And if it does long term, it will likely mean better infrastructure and more potential route terrain. I do, however, hope it changes the anti-bike culture in the Adirondacks which is sort of ingrained in people due to the Forever Wild wilderness ethic that permeates folks who know of and love the Adirondacks.