See Bikepacking the Colorado Trail, Summer 2022, Denver to Durango.
Lately I’ve felt the need to go on a bikepacking trip, and sometime around June, 2025 my friend Mark N. suggested one that sounded really good. He had been wanting to ride the Oregon Outback route. I took a look at it, and it suited me. It's in Oregon, the place where both my kids live, it's mostly gravel, something I could do with my favorite bike, and it crosses the eastern Oregon desert from south to north, someplace I hadn't really been. Having recently stopped working for a period of time, I had a big enough gap in my calendar that I could do this ride while looking for my next job. With no good news about the country I live in, I needed a break from bad news. I committed to doing the Oregon Outback within the next few months.
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| The Oregon Outback route |
A group started to form, committed to doing the trip; Andreas, Greg, Monty, Mark N. and me. I invited my friend Adam - an Oakland friend from the local riding group who had recently moved to Bend, Oregon. He had just finished the Oregon Timber Trail, and had more bikepacking experience than any of us. He also agreed to join, having had this route on his list to do for a while.
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| Falconer, loaded as if for Oregon |
On that last 3-day trip, I carried 6 L of water, all the gear, everything. I put the bike, all loaded up on my bathroom scale and I saw a 71 lb weight. That hurt my feelings! How could that be? What ensued was a lot of group obsession about the trip, the gear, the route, the logistics. We all watched videos of other people's rides, read their blog posts, studied the comments section on the route page, and just nerded out. We picked a date that was as late, and as early as possible for everyone's schedules, and the weather, finally deciding on a plan: the two Marks would leave Emeryville via Amtrak on September 29th, taking the train north to Klamath Falls, Oregon, starting their ride on the morning of September 30th, one day ahead of us. This was to account for the different paces. The rest of the East Bay group - Andreas, Greg, Monty and Morgan - would arrive via the next day's train in Klamath Falls on the 1st of October, a Wednesday, meet Adam, who would come by bus from Bend. We would get some food at a restaurant, get some groceries at a store, and then start riding. We bought Amtrak train tickets with checked bikes as baggage, with the option to change travel dates for the journey to Klamath Falls, and coordinated with Adam to meet us at the train station in Klamath Falls. I also bought a corresponding return ticket from Portland to Emeryville.
Greg had made reservations at this little restaurant out in the middle of nowhere, near Silver Lake, called the Cowboy Dinner Tree. It's pretty wild, I didn't realize how wild at the time, but that was chosen as our meeting point; the five riders and the two Marks. We believed we would ride together for a few days from Silver Lake and then potentially part ways as the different paces of the riding groups sorted themselves out. Mark N. was considering a ‘zero day’ in Prineville. This did present a challenge with the water carry required from Silver Lake all the way to Prineville; If we were going to do a 2-day journey, we would have to carry a lot of water.
As the time for departure grew nearer, I grew a bit more obsessive about the gear, making a spreadsheet, weighing everything, staring at the weather forecast, taking things out, putting things in. We discussed shared gear, and I did remove a few things that I thought we could share. I would carry the 220 gram Spot X tracking device, so that our families and friends could follow our progress, and so that we could hit the SOS button if we needed it. I would leave a few necessities behind that other people were carrying. In the days before the trip I finally got the weight of the bike down to 60 lb, without any water and with enough food to start the trip. I didn't really see much that I could get rid of. It turns out that I brought the right gear. I'll mention a few things at the end that I might have changed.
The bike was my trusty steel Falconer gravel bike, which Cameron Falconer built for me in 2017 as a “monster cross” bike, with “Extra Bomber Action.” Back then the monster cross idea was that you could have something between a cyclocross bike and a mountain bike, with room for bigger tires, a more relaxed geometry, and some of the best of both kinds of bikes. Thankfully, he basically imagined what a modern gravel bike for bike touring might look like in 2025, because it's perfect. Thank you, Cam. He had added triple braze-ons to the fork legs for cages, and the frame was roomy enough for bags. The bike is is built with a SRAM group, I swapped a new 38 tooth chainring in place of the usual 42 tooth front single ring, it has a 10-50 with rear 12-speed cassette, SRAM Force hydraulic disc brakes, rigid seat post, WTB Silverado saddle, wide, Salsa Cowchipper handlebars, Paul stem, a really nice set of used Enve / Chris King 29er MTB wheels that I found on Pinkbike, thanks to my son Sam, and clipless Time pedals. I switched from 45 mm to 50 mm, AKA 2” Panaracer GravelKing X1 tires, tubeless of course. I inflated them to 32 psi rear, 30 psi and I let the tire pressure bleed down over the course of the week. This tire size was a bit of a risk, as it only gave me 3 or 4 mm of clearance on the chainstays, but the weather forecast looked like we would not be getting mud. These tires were perfect for the trip, as it turns out.
I had bought a bunch of Tailfin bags; a top tube bag, a frame bag, an Aeropack Cargo rear rack/bag thing, some 10 L Mini Panniers, and a Mini Cage for underneath the Aeropack Cargo. I put tools and spares in a Randijo Fabrications M.U.T. bag, I had an ancient Mountain Feedbag on the handlebars for a water bottle, and I bought a 4 L Adventure Hydration Crank Tank for carrying lots of water down low. So did a few other people. This was a great piece of gear, in hindsight. For sleep I brought a 30° Marmot Hydrogen sleeping bag, an old REI silk bag liner, a Nemo Tensor long wide sleeping pad, a Nemo Fillo pillow, and my tried and true Tarptent Moment DW tent. Because of the chance of weather, I really wanted the tent. It was tempting to bring a bivy and a tarp, but I'm glad I brought the tent. See the spreadsheet for more details on what food, clothes and gear I brought. There was some debate about bringing camp chairs, five of the seven of us did, and I'm glad I brought one. Sitting on the ground was sometimes very cold, and I didn't want to put a hole in my down pants, or in my inflatable sleeping pad. It was worth the extra pound. (0.48kg) The MVP of my gear selection was the Ghost Whisperer down pants I got from Mountain Hardwear, they were clutch for cold camps.
I filled the bags with gear and clothes and food, and on the appointed day, rode my bike down the hill from my house to the Emeryville Amtrak station, where I met Greg, Andreas and Monty.
We had read about, and discussed the Amtrak limitation on tire size; 2” maximum, due to the hooks they use to hang bikes. This caused problems for the people bringing mountain bikes; some put 50 mm gravel tires on, while others flouted the rule. It turns out that the guy who loaded our bikes didn't even look twice. We all checked some of our bags as baggage. I carried on my front pack, which had my sleeping gear, so that I could use a neck pillow and my sleeping bag as a blanket. The train departed at 9:41 p.m., pretty late. We all settled in and tried to sleep, but not many of us slept much. I slept a little bit. I'm 6'2”, and there's just no way to get comfortable in those coach seats, other than reclined on my back. Smaller people can curl up on two empty seats, and the seats do fold back quite a ways, with a leg support that flips out, making it feel almost like a bed, but it doesn't work for side sleepers, and definitely not for big ones. I might have gotten 2 hours of sleep, probably the same for the rest.
Adam took a bus from Bend to Klamath Falls, getting there the night before us, and stayed at someone's house, thanks to Warm Showers. He was surprised to meet two bikepackers getting on the same bus in Bend, Kurt and Soph, bound for the same ride as us. More on them, later.
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