Just as with gravel riding, and indeed mountain biking, tyres are one of the most important things you need to consider when bikepacking.

Ideally, you’ll be looking for something that’s durable and resistant to puncturing: a tubeless setup comes highly recommended for off-road bikepacking. This helps to reduce punctures from thorns or sharp stones on the trail, and also enables you to run slightly lower tyre pressures with less risk of pinch punctures.

Be careful here though: you can still cause a snakebite puncture in the tyre itself with a tubeless setup.

Wider gravel tyres will offer greater comfort and the increased volume will enable you to run lower pressures than skinnier tyres, which will be beneficial if you plan on spending a long time on your bike.

Make sure you research the terrain on your route and match the tread type accordingly, depending on how rough or smooth you anticipate the tour to be, as well as what weather and trail conditions you’re likely to face.

Fit and geometry

Bikepacking-oriented bikes tend to feature a more upright position than race-focused bikes, which should give a greater degree of comfort. To achieve this, they typically have shorter top tubes and longer head tubes.

Meanwhile, a longer wheelbase and slacker head tube help to prevent toe overlap in this position, and crucially give a more stable ride feel over rougher terrain, which becomes even more important when it comes to loading up with bikepacking bags.

Handlebars and cockpit

Hand, wrist and shoulder comfort become really important when you spend many hours in the saddle, especially over multi-day rides. Although traditional drop-bar setups give multiple hand positions (on the tops, on the drops, on the hoods), some ultra endurance riders add clip-on aero bars to offer even more positions and help prevent any discomfort.

Flared bars, where the drops are wider than the tops, are popular for bikepacking. This not only gives a wider, more stable position for descending, but also grants you a little more space between the bars for bikepacking bags.

If you’re using a bike with flat bars, such as a mountain bike, you might want to consider both the shape of your bars and adding more hand positions.

Check out handlebar options with more sweep, which put your wrists into a more ergonomic position, and greater rise for a more upright position. This can not only make you more comfortable, but also give you more clearance over the front tyre for handlebar bags.

Russell Burton

Different-shaped bars, such as the Jones H-Bar, give multiple hand positions as well as bag, light and GPS mounting options. If you’d like more space for mounting gadgets, consider handlebar accessory mounts such as those from Velo Orange or Nitto.

Katherine Moore

Bar ends can also help to add more hand positions to flat bars, and can be sourced either as a stand-alone item or integrated into ergonomic grips, such as those from Ergon.

Mounts galore

Surly

Frame and fork mounts are all the rage right now, enabling you to add racks, cargo cages and bags all over your frame, giving you greater versatility when it comes to your setup.

In addition to two pairs of bottle cage bosses in the main triangle, you can often now find these under the down tube, on the top tube and on the fork legs. Then there are also rack and mudguard mounts.

Trek

Some bikes even feature threaded mounts all around the main triangle so you can use a strap-free full frame bag.

Felix Smith / Immediate Media

If you’re planning on heading somewhere remote, where you’ll need to carry more kit or water, fork mounts are a good idea for giving you extra capacity. These are also really handy for shorter riders, where space between the bars and under the saddle may be limited.

Frame material

Richard Baybutt

Because you can use any bike for bikepacking, that goes for any frame material too, although different options will have their benefits and drawbacks.

While carbon fibre bikes are likely to be lighter, which can help marginally as you haul your laden bike up a steep hill, do take note of their maximum system weight recommendations, especially if you think you may exceed this when it comes to adding your loaded bikepacking bags.

The same goes for carbon fibre components, especially seatposts and handlebars. It’s best to check the manufacturer’s recommendations before loading up.

Steel and titanium are often touted as the best materials for bikepacking thanks to their durability, because they’re more likely to be able to withstand the heavy use that bikepacking can entail.

Rapha

Round-the-world tourers often opt for steel bikes because the frames can be fixed almost anywhere by a welder. Titanium is more tricky here, and more expensive in the first place, although it is more resistant to corrosion than steel.

If you’re planning on running a front rack setup, you’ll need to check the carrying capacity of the fork. Steel forks tend to be better for this than carbon, which can be limited here.

Aluminium alloy frames tend to be more common at the budget end of gravel and bikepacking bikes. Some say that this gives a slightly harsher ride than carbon, titanium or steel, although you’re likely to be able to alleviate this by optimising tyre pressures.

Serviceability and easy maintenance

Fairlight

Depending on where you’re heading, how easy it’ll be to maintain and service your bike is an important consideration. Does your bike use proprietary parts that are only available from select dealers, or are the components easily sourced worldwide?

Some long-distance bike tourers choose cable disc brakes over hydraulic for this reason, because a cable tends to be more easily replaced at the side of the trail than bleeding brakes, for example.

On the flip side, hydraulic brakes tend to offer better performance. Ultimately, it’s up to personal preference, your own mechanical capability and where you’re planning on bikepacking.

If you’re planning on putting a huge number of miles through your bikepacking rig, consider how much it’ll cost you to stay on top of the maintenance, too. You might be able to stretch to a top-tier groupset as an initial outlay, for example, but remember that premium parts will need replacing down the line due to wear, and that won’t be cheap.

Gearing

Katherine Moore

Simply put, you’ll need a wider range of gearing when it comes to loading up and heading out on a bikepacking adventure than you would for your standard day rides. This is because you’ll have to compensate for the extra weight on your bike due to the luggage.

Grinding your way up steep inclines while undergeared is no fun, and your knees won’t thank you for it either, especially if you do the same day after day.

Current gravel gearing options tend to be a bit limited, although SRAM’s new XPLR gearing, featuring a 10-44-tooth cassette, is helping to bridge the divide between gravel and MTB gear ranges.

Although a more expensive option, electronic shifting can both help reduce hand and finger fatigue from shifting, and leave more space between the bars for handlebar bags. Just remember to pack the battery charger!

For an ultra-low maintenance drivetrain, as well as a little weight saving, some riders opt to bikepack on singlespeed rigs. It’s not an easy task by any means, and one that takes some practice too.

Dynamo options

Andy Lloyd

When you head off-grid, electricity can be a limiting factor, because you’ll likely need to charge bike lights, your bike computer, your phone etc. While a battery pack is a handy addition to your bikepacking kit list, a dynamo wheel can also help to give you some more power.

At the cost of a little extra weight and resistance, a dynamo hub can translate kinetic energy from your ride to electric energy, which can be used to power fixed lights or charge items via a USB port.

This can be super-handy on longer tours, or even on commutes if you’re prone to forgetting to charge your lights in the winter (guilty).

Do bear in mind that different dynamos are designed to work effectively at different speeds, so you’ll need to match that to your anticipated ride. If you’re heading off-road on technical terrain, for example, the speed is likely to be much lower, which may limit the setup’s capability.

Think about whether you’ll need internal dynamo routing, such as on the Fairlight Faran 2.0, and where you’ll mount lights or charging ports.

Check out our in-depth guide to bike dynamos here.

Suspension

Tailfin

For more technical, MTB-orientated bikepacking routes such as the Highland 550 or the Colorado Trail, employing a little suspension is often a good idea. Hardtails or lightweight cross-country bikes tend to work best.

The key point here is that you’ll need to alter your suspension setup, adding pressure to compensate for the additional weight of your luggage so that you don’t risk damaging your fork and/or shock.

It’s also a really good idea (as with any bike setup) to go for a test ride before your trip, to make sure that all your bikepacking bags are compatible with the bike when you use the suspension.

Pedals

Jack Luke / Immediate Media

Which pedals you’ll use for your bikepacking trip really comes down to personal preference, but also the nature of your plans.

If you’re going for a more casual tour and want to take in some cultural sites while bikepacking, you might prefer flat pedals because you can hop straight off the bike and wander around town in casual shoes.

However, if long, tough days are on the cards, then efficiency might be more of a priority for you, so clipless MTB-style pedals might be a wiser choice.

Platform clipless pedals, or trail pedals are also a good idea if you’d like to clip in, but tend to suffer from hotspots on your feet during long rides.

Saddles

Finding the right saddle for you is an incredibly personal topic, and something that we’ve delved into in a lot more detail in our saddle guide. Saddle soreness is the bikepacker’s number one enemy, so taking time to get this right is crucial.

Be mindful that due to the altered body position, what works for you on other bikes might not work best for you on a bikepacking bike.

Considerations for shorter riders

With smaller frames and clearances, shorter riders are often left puzzling how to fit bikepacking bags to their steeds. Narrow handlebars limit bar bag capacity as well as reduced clearance over the front wheel due to shorter head tubes; shorter seatposts give less room over the rear tyre for seatpost bags and let’s not even mention how small those main triangles can be.

In some cases, smaller-capacity bike bags can help to make the most of these smaller spaces, but combined these are unlikely to give you enough space for a full range of bikepacking gear.

Christine Geiger / Stayer

Here, fork-mounted luggage such as cargo cages with dry bags or fork-specific bikepacking bags can help add capacity, or give you space to store water bottles if you’re running a frame bag.

In extreme cases, you may be forced to adopt a rack setup: with either a conventional bolt-on rack and panniers, or a more novel approach such as the Tailfin rack system.

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