Originally Posted by
downtube42
In the end it just means more variety of stuff on the market.
Just because someone sells something as bikepacking or touring or gravel riding doesn't mean you can't buy it and use it to haul your grandma's hand-knit socks to the football stadium across town, or whatever seemingly bizarre but normal to you things you want to do.
That depends on what you want to do. For road touring, panniers are by far the best solution as is a traditional touring bike. I have 25L and 40L bags but I could probably get by with just two 25L sets. If I’m not bashing through rocks however, panniers just don’t cut it...even ones with great attachment systems like the Ortlieb. I’ve toured off-road with panniers and it was less than ideal. On a 300 mile trip, I had to stop several times to retrieve bags that had flown off.
Rollins Pass, 8/10/85 by
Stuart Black, on Flickr
I’ve also done off-road tours with trailers which is even less ideal. I don’t necessarily like bikepacking gear for the reasons given above but trailers are worse then either panniers or bikepacking gear.