Bikepacking in Idaho - June 2022

 In June I tried bikepacking for the first time. What an adventure!

I’ve known Ryan since high school and he’s the one that really got me into cycling to begin with. He moved out to Idaho a few years ago, so I don’t get to see him much. He loves bikepacking and has tried to get me to do it for a while now. Bikepacking is pretty much what it sounds like: backpacking on a bike! Instead of strapping your sleeping back, tent, food, etc to a pack on your back, you figure out ways to strap it to your bike. You ride out, hopefully with a specific campsite in mind, maybe take the long way out to it, camp that night, then keep going the next day. It takes the term “self-supported riding” to a whole new level!

Ryan runs a bike shop in Idaho Falls, so we can usually make arrangements to find something that will fit me when I’m out there. This time it was a fat bike. “Fat bikes” have huge, 5 or 6 inch diameter tires that absorb the bumps in the trail where shock absorbers might serve on a mountain bike. I’ve never ridden a fat bike before, but they’re very common in the midwest because they’re great for riding in snow. Those giant tires provide a ton of grip and traction. They also work well bikepacking because one main objective is keeping things simple. Big tires are easier to maintain and fix out in the middle of nowhere than sophisticated modern suspension. 

Ryan and I met up with two of his friends, Joe and Stephen, on a Saturday after the shop closed and headed out to the trail. We started in Kelly Canyon and rode out to Moody Creek, taking as many single track offshoot trails as we could on the way out. The fat bike was a kick! Modern mountain bike suspension absorbs and dampens bumps. The big tires of a fat bike absorb a little, but mostly bounce. I felt like I was riding two big bouncing balls down all of the trails! It was really fun. 

I wore a helmet but felt like an outlier. I was riding a new bike, plus it was a fat bike which I’ve never ridden, plus it was under load that I’m not used to… I’m pretty convinced I’m going to crash pretty spectacularly at least once on this ride. Turns out I didn’t! 

I wasn’t the first up the climbs (these guys were really strong!) but they eventually decided that I should go first on the downhills. At the bottom of one decent one of them told me he’d never seen anyone “shred on a fat bike like that”. Awesome! I will certainly take that compliment!

After we got to the campsite and had everything set up, Ryan pulled a couple of Tenkara fishing rods out of a tube strapped to his bike and a couple of the guys went fly fishing. We had it all! 

After a moderate night’s sleep we packed up and headed home. We didn’t take as many side trails on the way back as we had on the way out as a storm system was moving in. Right when we got to the cars the clouds opened up and started raining. Perfect timing!

I’ll certainly have to do this again someday soon!