Originally Posted by
staehpj1
It kind of seems to me as if the whole thing comes down to how people define bikepacking and I think there is little agreement on that. Often it seems to be pretty heavily tied to the style of bags used. To me that makes little to no sense. In other definitions it is more about where you tour. In still other definitions it is about what you do or don't carry or what kind of bike you ride. At some point trying to draw a hard line becomes kind of moot. A lot of what I do is vaguely on one side or the other of the line between bikepacking and touring that isn't bikepacking and I personally just choose to call it all touring. That is probably because I am in my late 60s rather than my late 20s or 30s.
For me the line between touring and bikepacking is the terrain that is covered. Touring is mostly on paved roads and bikepacking concentrates on gravel and other off road paths. Mine and your setups might be looked at as "bikepacking" because we use principles of ultralight camping in gear selections and don't have panniers despite them being on basically road bikes. What often amuses me about bikepacking set ups is the number of bags they like to use and some of the set ups look very cluttered. This would annoy me when traveling off the bike and when setting up camp.