I second the winter one.

Cool, give the S&S a try then, but I'd lean towards putting rubber plugs inside the tubes than the bike drybag idea. I'd love to see it in action on a boat.
For panniers, a rear rack is fine, but a front rack would get in the way on the boat quite a bit more. if you used the Ortlieb roll down ones then your waterproof issue is taken care of.
Unless you got a Dory, the trailer and bike is out of the question.

Class 2 with bikes, I wouldn't go any more than that although it has been done. Handling is fine, the important thing is making sure you have good paddle clearance so it does not affect your stroke.
so where are you going then?

Welcome Rob,
Where are you located?

For your question - the s&s sounds like more hassle than its worth. You are talking total bike disassembly and reassembly and are looking at a pretty long transition time. We typically do the following - drop the seatpost, take off the left side pedal, loosen the handle bar clamp and slide the handle bar all the way to the left, wheels off. stack the wheels and twist the fork around. Wheels either stacked on one side, with the pack on the other, or with the pack in the middle and the wheels in a pyramid position.

Also you'd need a really heavy duty dry bag to put the bike into all taken apart - lots of pointy things to tear into it.
The water really dosent hurt the bike too much. you just need to re-pack your hub bearings more often. ButPackrafting with your bike just isnt the best the best thing in general for a bike.

packs - that Ergon looks funky, rigid plastic etc. and it is not waterproof, you'll still need drybags. Big difference between waterproof fabric and seam sealed construction. Lots of little drybags are better than one big one too. I prefer super light, no frame, and minimal padding so it does not absorb water. Also having a pack with dry bags inside, rather than a pack inside a large drybag makes it easier to transition and access stuff. some of this might be confusing but will make sense once you think about it a bit.







so anyway, in an ideal world it might be a good idea, it sounds unnecessary, complex and quite expensive.

I just cook bacon at home and throw it in a ziploc, that's it. great for cooler weather and to add to potato flakes, never tried dehydrating it - anyone else?

for fire cooking - basically spaghetti, but I've done quinoa too. fish is the best for sure.

This summer I re-learned cooking on fires, while in some parts this is not a good way to go due to forest fire risk and land issues. But in Alaska it sure is. So the food planning changed a bunch. A good mix of meals that you can eat without cooking at all and more long cook meals. If fuel is an issue - couscous, potato flakes are great.
Dried coconut milk found in asian stores is cheap and makes excellent easy curry.
For breakfast and ride food I've switched exclusively to cookie dough. Most calories per dollar by far of anything else. After 3 weeks on the gulf coast we were still plowing down a pound a day and loving every bit of it really. soo good.

An important thing is water weight. Really the only acceptable place for it in my view is in butter & cheese. Everything else can be totally dry. Tuna packets are out, as are most other things. Those expensive freeze dried packets are still just dried starches mostly, so in the end you can get the same amount of calories from simple dry starches and your choice of fats as if you spent 5 x as much money. Tortillias are worth it sometimes on short trips even though they are a bit heavy.

Sherpaxc - precooked bacon is so good, just don't tell the bears you have it.

 and one more thing - don't completely diss Ramen - it has its place. It can be eaten uncooked (and is quite good) and is amazingly yummy mixed with potato flakes and butter. Yep not the most healthy - but you can be healthy later.

that's awesome you carried all the water for 2 days with lightweight means.

The time I did it as an overnight with 4 people total and we used 2 trailers. Kinda a drag... (literally)

what's a road bike?

The Jandd is excellent, you cant go wrong with it. They are well built, I used one for years before the zippers died.

Thinking outside the box, I'm a big fan of Hilleberg tents. Super high quality and high price tags.
The Rajd might be worth a try. The Nallo 2 is an excellent double wall tent also.

Or you could get a Black Diamond or Mountain Laurel Design Mid and have mosquito netting sewn around the perimeter.

Cookie dough - sans eggs.
take a few pounds of softened butter, add oats, crasins, tons of cinnamon, brown sugar, slivered almonds, penut butter, chocolate chips rasins... you get the idea until it is not sticky but not crumbly either. Breakfast, lunch and dinner all in one ziplock bag with 1000's of calories. 1 lb per day..

cheap, extremely calorie dense food.

it takes some getting used to though and isnt the best thing for high intensity... but then you'll never buy bars again.

that's hilarious.
so shoot if you cant get your stove to lite, just get lit yourself.

Aside from stoves and more on firestarting, I'm a big fan of carrying a little 2oz bottle of 99% in my chest pocket. A capfull is all you need to get excellent ignition on damp kindiling.

yeah, thanks, that was from my SNL days. Sarah was hot? really?

Just sleep with it and kick anything that comes and bothers you.

I'm a fan of Polar pure iodine crystals, it creates a solution that you use to treat. And a bottle basically lasts forever. I either loose it or break the bottle before I run out. Iodine tabs are lighter though. You cant buy polar pure in all states though since you can make Crystal meth with it. PM me if interested how.

just kidding.
But generally in the mountains if I don't think there are beavers upstream I just drink it.
Filters are worthless in Alaska due to the glacier sediment too.

sweet!
Eric Parsons - aka Bearbait on that other forum. Started mountain biking about 18 years ago beating up an LL bean mountain bike on muddy east coast trails. Then I got a rockhopper and things improved greatly as Manitou 1 elastomers were flattened and derailliers thrashed. Moved from New York to Colorado to finish college and be in the mountains in the mid- late 90's and realized that trying to go fast sucked and I got into endurance racing. It was allot more fun to do 6 hr night rides on the CT than puke on intervals. Anyway, first big tour was in Kashmir. We towed heavy trailers all over high high passes, it was a great trip but we learned how much could be stripped down. Went to Patagonia solo in 2002 and bikepacked north to south for over 2 months. Learned all about wind and getting wet! Moved to Alaska shortly thereafter. The singletrack took a hit since the trails here are few and riding season short, but that was exchanged for learning more about wilderness travel. Snow biking the ultra sport to McGrath in 2005 bought the focus to biking in the cold. The travel bug got itched again later that year and I left to tour the northern part of South America for six months. Pushing the remote comfort level up a few notches.  Started Epic Designs sellling frame bags about a year ago to fill the void in quality winter riding gear, with the intent to fill voids in touring gear as well. Quit the day job in January to sew gear in my garage, combining the passions... Engineering with hands-on work and of course - mountain biking.

Most recently I've been looking for fun wilderness riding experiences using packrafts, mostly since we are just bored with all the rest of the southcentral Alaska trails. Its just the natural progression.

Other than bikes I like eating, sleeping, mountaineering, videography, laughing as much as possible and making fun of people.  Cheers,

mtbr liked this one so might as well have it here too!

How many days of food do you have?” asked the Denali National park Service backcountry permit form. Dylan gave a wry smile and wrote the number 5 in the blank, my stomach groaned at the thought as I think about the 2 days packed in my frame bag. Maybe our plan is a bit ambitious, but that’s how a good trip usually starts.

Our plan was to join two methods of travel, the mountain bike and the 4 lb inflatable packraft (www.alpackaraft.com) packrafts are little known to the rest of the world, but have been used for decades by Alaskan adventurers to float remote rivers and access areas without all the weight and hassle of bigger kayaks and rafts. New Alpackas are light, durable and have opened up many new backcountry travel possibilities, including far flung mountain bike routes involving rivers...

So back to the real plan, bike 56 miles of the gravel Denali park road, over Sable and Polychrome passes, then hit the Toklat River, strap our bikes to the packrafts and float it north out of the Alaska Range into the interior to the confluence of the East Fork. From there we would attempt to find the remains of the famed “Stampede trail” an old mining road blazed back in the 1930’ but more recently popularized by the death of Christoper Mc Candless and the “Into the Wild” book and film. We’d take the trail and ride it back to the highway, and close the loop. 2 days, no problem, this is going to be fun!

Starting on the Denali Park Road:


Kellie at mile 50, cresting Polychrome pass, a bit of clouds and rain, but no big deal. Mt McKinley is back there somewhere…


We biked the road with a bit of urgency, we got a late 2:00 pm start and we were hoping to float the river that night. We descended Polychrome sometime around 8:00pm and hit the Toklat river which gave some fun gravel bar riding, it was nice to be off the road and heading into the unknown.



We quickly decided that rather than hassle and get wet with the boats and just get wet again, that we’d make an early camp and hit the river in the morning, we were all kinda tired anyway.

Dylan’s dinner – give the man cookie dough and cheese and he’ll go many hundreds of miles.


Rain all night gave way to a bluebird morning, we were stoked:


Rigging the rafts, none of us had done this before so there was a bit of trial and error involved…


Finally we hit the river, being a big braided mess there were fun sections like this but mixed in with lots of grounding out on shallow gravel bars and walking in the 34 degree glacier water. Typical packrafting really.



Passing by Mt. Sheldon, named after Alaska’s famous bush pilot that pioneered glacier landings in support of mountaineering expeditions.



Down stream travel was pretty good, but since we opted to go light, we left the drysuits at home, shaking the cold that creeps in from splashing, walking and sitting in glacier river water is hard to break. And a real effort must be made to keep hypothermia at bay. Here is one of our several “get out and run” stops with thunderclouds looming…


Past more shelf ice…


We were now in the interior and had picked up several other major rivers which quickened the travel as the river grew. After 12+ hours on the river, and chilled to the bone we hit the East fork confluence, took out and quickly built a bon fire with numb limbs to warm up and dry out. fire = life..


So there we were, quite remote with lots of uncertainties of what lay ahead and pretty underestimated on food, the weather was perfect however and we were all eager to get back on our bikes the next morning.
Dylan finds some shelf ice to ride (it was pretty slushy..)


One of the many, many river crossings traveling up the east fork gravel bars:


Here is when things start to get fussy, there was no sign of the stampede trail, and the map we brought didn’t have much else to show, we just generally knew we needed to get off the river and contour around a ridgeline that we could barely see from the river bed. It was hard to leave the relative ease of travel on the river and dive head first into the bushwack, but that’s what needed to happen. The compass came out, pedals & bar ends removed and weight transferred to backpacks for easier pushing.


After an hour we broke out of the forest and into a huge tussuk field, The visibility was great, but pushing bikes through the million mounds of grass was Type B fun for sure.


We noticed what we thought was the Stampede trail road bed cutting up the hillside far in the distance, so we made a b-line towards that…


Once we wre on it though it really was evident that it was built in the 1930’s and not used since! Alder schwackfest!



The trail was so faint it simply disappeared at times, re-claimed by nature. We kept pushing on up the ridgeline, knowing that somewhere distant was the Sashana River, site of the bus, and it would be a decent trail from there.
Looking back at the tussock plain we left behind


The food situation was gnawing, mentally pushing through wilderness like this, going on a king size snickers all day for 12 hours and having only a cliff bar to go is tougher mentally than it is physically. After a few more hours we reached a point where we could see the Sashana River valley far in the distance. We will go there...


Having a definite landmark to march too made things a bit easier and lifted the uncertainties a bit. Hours more of pushing and sidehilling through tussocks and mosquitos brough dusk and we hit the Sashana River at about midnight. Nice when it dosent get dark isn’t it?

Some of the many wolf and bear tracks we passed:


The temps dropped into the low 40’s on the river and we all in go-mode but feeling the last 15+ hours of effort on very limited food.



It got hard to shake the chills... them Kellie stops “ do you smell smoke?” the moment it came out of her mouth I smelt it too. Someone was having a campfire. A few more bends up the river and an obvious ATV trail headed straight uphill – the first sign of a real and used trail yet. A short push uphill and there it was – fire, people and the Fairbanks 142 Bus.


The warmth of the fire was rejuvenating and the other campers there gave us some ramen and granola bars. They seemed pretty amazed that we came out from the other end of the trail with bikes. We decided to just crash by the fire for the night and ride out the full length of the Stampede trail in the morning.

It was quite Ironic, given the history about the buss and the ”Into the Wild” story, that here we were, having our own adventure, out of food. It all added to the meaning of the place.
The next day was great, nice to be back riding our bikes again after rafting and pushing them all this way. The trail was better than we had expected, sometimes at least:




Reaching the Teklanika River, a big one, this is the river that McCandless could not cross when he tried to hike out to get food. I could imagine how much higher it would be later in the year when the glaciers are melting.


The bikes were holding up pretty good given the abuse, until this, it was on the spindle for me for the final 25 miles.


What the hell is that?

A few hours later riding the highway we were back in tourist land at the Denali park entrance mowing down burittos and ice cream..

rough video:

http://www.vimeo.com/1160662