Originally Posted by
Happy Feet
I suppose one can backpack Europe (for example) sort of similar to a tour but in that case one is usually taking a single pack and traveling light, not several suitcases.
For what it is worth, I see two slightly different uses of the term "backpacking" or "backpackers".
Growing up in Colorado, "backpacking" is what we did in the Colorado mountains. Go for a week or so on trails through various back country areas. I also backpacked in Utah canyon country and also thought of people hiking the Appalachian or Pacific Crest trails as backpackers.
As I started traveling to Australia, Europe or other places, I also encountered "backpackers". These were folks, often young, who were traveling with just a backpack to carry their stuff. There was correlation with people traveling on the cheap. These folks were more likely to stay in hostels.
I've interpreted "bike packing" as more of an outgrowth of the first term of backpacking. Essentially an outgrowth of mountain biking and somewhat a cross with backpacking. I see it getting popularized by routes like the GDMBR and races like Tour Divide, but also similar things. I see companies like Revelate coming after that with branding their bag systems as "bikepacker" bags. Although they can be used in other instances, such bags met needs for bikes that didn't always have racks and situations where narrow single track could hang up on panniers that were too wide. I think things have grown from there, but also note that traveling the GDMBR, Baja Divide and similar routes expand in popularity. I did some short stretches of GDMBR on my 2016 trip and noticed a variety of ages (not all young hipsters), gear and approaches to following that route.
Similarly, I see my definition of touring as pretty broad - including tours I've done. I find a bigger difference between (a) what I call "expedition touring", e.g. on rough often-unpaved roads in developing countries and (b) supported multi-day rides like Ride the Rockies than I find between (a) expedition touring and (c) bike packing on the GDMBR. In between are things like TDA, a supported ride across Africa or self-supported riding on routes like the Transamerica trail.
The exact terms can often be broader and sometimes get mixed together but I would have slightly different pictures in my head if someone said they were going "bike packing" vs. "bike touring". But I might also get surprised with what they actually meant.