Bikepacking is essentially backpacking on a bike – multi-day human-powered travel on trails, dirt and paved roads.

Bikepacking Roots is dedicated to supporting and advancing bikepacking by creating exceptional routes, advocating for landscapes and bicycle access, and fostering a supportive and inclusive community of bikepackers.

 

We create exceptional routes that are:

  • Intentional, to create rewarding riding experiences and help riders connect with the landscapes and communities they traverse
  • Well-designed, with realistic difficulty ratings, water and resupply options for riders
  • Well-researched, with input from local cyclists and on-the-ground test riders
  • Entirely on bike-legal trails and roads, with clear explanations of relevant permits and restrictions.

 

We work to protect the landscapes we traverse. We recognize that as bikepackers, wild places enable and shape our adventures, and that we have an interest in and responsibility to help protect them, and prevent harm from development and extractive industries.

We also advocate for bikepackers’ access to public lands. But we recognize that healthy landscapes are complex and interconnected webs of competing interests, including the geography, ecosystems, watersheds, and human communities in a region. As such, we are willing to prioritize the health of a larger landscape over immediate bicycle access if needed.

We recognize that bikepackers ride on land stolen from Indigenous groups, and that our current public land designations are rooted in problematic historical perspectives, which can perpetuate racism and the erasure of BIPOC people. We believe landscapes cannot be whole without Indigenous voices in land management conversations.

We also cultivate a stewardship ethos in the bikepacking community, helping riders develop connections to the landscapes and communities they traverse, have positive interactions with land managers and other user groups, and have a positive impact on the places we visit.

 

We foster a supportive and inclusive bikepacking community. We believe that bikepacking should be accessible to people from all walks of life. We recognize the history of exclusion and inequitable representation in outdoor sports, so we welcome and elevate marginalized voices.