...For carrying 35lbs or so, the old adage of having a touring bike with gearing of about 20-100 gear inches works very well, this is what my experience has shown me. Even with a mountain crank 42 or 44/32/22 you will get nice low gears AND perfectly useable gears for the vast majority of riding at 15-25kph that we do most of the day.
I have to agree. The bike is also not under geared for an unloaded ride, which maybe is important to you. My combo is a 22/32/44 crankset and an 11-30T cassette. More importantly, the gearing is
close enough for headwind trimming. If I weren't going to change my back-up touring bike to an 8S, the 13-30T cassette would be a workable partner to it's 24-34-42T crankset.
Brad