Tossing a 3L bladder in a frame bag is easy but be careful what else ends up in there - I’ve gotten pinholes in them and so have others in our cru.
Slightly less space efficient is to stack 3 1L smartwater bottles in your frame bag - they’re tougher and your eggs aren’t all in one basket.
I have a Crank Tank but it rubbed on my calves so I never ended up using it. It’s well made and is good way to carry 4L, but I’m not sure it really outperforms other options.
My standard desert carry right now is 2 x 1.5L smartwater bottles on the fork. 1.75L big bottle under the down tube, 0.7L large water bottle on the bars.
the climb out from mineral bottom is almost half of the climbing, and the rest of the route is pretty chill with only one or two techy hike a bike sections (at least I had to hike, ymmv). I think if you’re not going at a pace trying to race against dark, and can take some strategic shady rests during the heat of the day, you’ll definitely drink less water. I don’t have any moab mtb experience really, so can’t compare it to that, but white rim definitely didn’t feel as hard as i was expecting.
I feel like I always end up using more at camp than I expect though, both just drinking it myself, but also cooking and washing.
we also used some of the 1.5L smartwater bottles, but at least one person had them spring a leak, probably just over tightened with voile straps or something.
not sure what the silt situation is, but packing a folding bucket or something and waiting thirty minutes for the silt to settle to the bottom and pumping from the clear water at the top is something I’ve done in the past. don’t know if it’s a reasonable idea here.
this might be a good option for a very silty river:
“A lighter solution is to use alum to settle the silt, then purify the clear water with chemicals or a filter, or my favorite, the SteriPen™. Alum is used in home pickling to add crispness, and as a settling agent in water treatment plants. It is non-toxic and tasteless. Most pharmacies have it. A twelve ounce (340 gram) bottle contains enough alum to settle about 24 gallons of silty water.”
That’s a decent idea. I would definitely add some padding around the bladder if i go with a bladder.
mostly i want to keep the front end somewhat light for when i do have to push just so it’s a bit easier to handle. so hoping to keep the water weight low and centered.
I’ve only done one bike packing trip and my stuff was mostly all on the bars + saddlebag and it rode fine, but the bike felt very top heavy.
If you want to borrow the cranktank it’s not getting used at the moment, though from a dithering standpoint it might complicate what you do with the rest of the frame space.
I dont know what the terrain is like there, but the other day I rode with 3/4s of my poopbarn kit on, the front 3/4s. I was blown away at how damn good my bike felt on my local singletrack trails with no tail-wag rear bag on. I was just hugging the trails so well. I have observed its a real trend, but more at the pointy end, not so much touring styles. I had two bottles in my stem mounted feedbags on my recent ride and it was no problem, on some pretty tame countryside tho.
Its 160km total i think it’s about 80% 4x4 road and about 20% dirt road with a short bit of pavement. So it’s all wide open. Desert so it’s a mix of red dirt/sand and rocks. I haven’t ridden the route but it’s pretty standard for the area, should be lots of ledges and sand in between the rock sections.
I only need to pack for one night so I’m hoping to avoid a big tail wagging bag too. May still need something back there but hoping to keep it smaller (had like a 14L bag on the previous trip and it was huge)
Picking up 3 cargo cages for the fork legs and the down tube and a cradle/dry bag combo for the bars (probably put my sleeping bag there).
I’ve definitely shoved a 3l bladder into the bottom of a frame bag for desert camping. Not really had any issues with that. Even ran the hose up to my bars to drink from like a triathlete or something. These days I’m lazy and soft and if I had the option to cache stuff the day before I’d cache as much as I could and just enjoy the unencumbered ride.
I’ve done White Rim twice, both times in two days. I carried ~8L of water: 4x 48oz nalgenes + a 1.5L camelbak + a standard bike bottle in a feed bag. First year i was getting a little thirsty at the end and starting to ration my remaining water, the other year it seemed like plenty. But it’s worth noting that I’m a pretty thirsty boi and also used a lot of water to cook.
The bigger issue at White Rim is that you never really get down to the river in the first place, it’s at the bottom of a canyon and you’re halfway up. There are some locations where you get closer to the river on the far eastern edge of the loop, but it’s still a fair amount of bushwacking off the road to reach it. Not particularly near anywhere that it sounds like Amy is planning to camp, either.
oh yeah THAT’s why I was going dry near the end of the first year: this happened to one of our other riders. “hey greg why is your framebag pissing itself?”
The trouble is that you need a 4x4 vehicle and a day pass (limited number of vehicles allowed per day) to cache. There’s one spot you can hike it in without going on the 4x4 route, but it’s a trek (5 mi round trip with a lot of gain).
Seems like we’re looking into having someone cache water but it’s not a sure thing yet so I’m trying to cover my bases.
This is good feedback. I’m thinking of i can fill once that carrying 6L should be sufficient. I just need to aim to drink 1.5L or so before the fill up at 20 mi. That would give me 7.5 L to work with in total which feels pretty safe.
Kayak touring folks swear by MSR Dromedary bags (camping on small islands = carry all your fresh water). They’re coated in Cordura, so abrasion should be a non-issue. Looks like 4L is the smallest size available.
Prayed to the wrong idol or something before my CR trip, which was a shortened version of this. Wanted to do a longer write up but here are just the mishaps:
Day 1, Tambor to Santa Teresa:
Mile 0: Valve failure at the house. Luckily I had extras. Fillmore valves are great but extremely fragile and sometimes pumps just shear them in half. Luckily, they have a great warranty and every time you break one, they send you two more.
Mile 2: Hit a patch of sand going too slow and fell with all my weight on my arm. Pretty sure I broke my elbow. Iced it for an hour (I had frozen two bottles), took some ibuprofen and codeine with Tylenol, then decided I could keep riding. Later it would look like this.
Took the day off to nurse injuries and because we over budgeted what was possible to ride in a day. Friend brought me a cleat and we drove to the next town on our trip.
While pulling my bike out of a car, I broke my RD.
My friend rode without me and I tried to source a GRX derailleur on a rural peninsula in Central America. Somehow, there was a fancy MTB shop in Nosara, our next destination, that had exactly one.
Day 4, Nosara to Junquillal:
Noticed my disc rotor is out of true. I can’t seem to adjust my front brake in a way that can stop the bike but doesn’t drag.
Decided I don’t need sunscreen because I’m already tan, got very sunburned.
Day 5, Junquillal to Nicoya:
Shoe fell apart. Sole separated from the body. At a rodeo, glued it back together.
All in all it was the hardest riding of my life, even without the gear stuff and injury. Definitely underbiking on a gravel bike with 47s. Typical riding was like 15% chunky gravel climbs and descents, punctuated with river crossings of unknown depths, in 90 degree heat. Incredible stuff, can’t recommend it enough.
Immediately when it happened I thought I broke my arm, then one minute later I could move my fingers so I thought I didn’t break my arm, then a week later I realized I definitely broke my arm. Took like 6 weeks to recover. Never went to a doctor but got advice from my PT brother over video chat.
