Most road triples will go as small as 24t in the granny chain ring. I changed gearing all over the place looking for what I liked. My tour bike came 52,42,30 with 11-32 and I ended up with 52,42,24 with 12-36. At one point I had a mountain bike crank on it just to name one of many.
I suggest using this site to look at gearing choices, and to experiment without trying things out the hard way. Start by putting in what you have now and knowing what gear inch you are in on the bike. Load the bike up with what you think your touring load will be front and back. And ride it in the gears you have and think about what top and bottom gears you will need and then think about what range you would like across the center chain ring. For me making front shifts all the time is not the way to go that’s why I wanted my center ring to span the most used riding conditions. The large chain ring won’t get used much and will overlap the center range a lot. I tried to make the overlap fall in-between the gear inches I got with the center like (half steps) that shift large to center isn’t as bad a shift as center to granny. Then with the granny I wanted to go super low so I had 6 good gear inches off the cassette I could use.
Weight can be counteracted with gearing and all you lose is speed.
http://home.earthlink.net/~mike.sherman/shift.html