Shifting Gears
BIKEPACKING VANCOUVER ISLAND By Jessica C. Levine, place-based science educator; @olivemybike
Jessica on the Sooke Hills Wilderness Trail. Photo by Emily Behrendt. All other photos by Jessica C. Levine unless otherwise noted.
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any Pacific Northwesterners rely on cars to get to the mountains, forests, islands, and waters to adventure and experience nature. Yet, you don’t need a car to access these beautiful places. As an experienced and carbon-conscious adventure cyclist, I’ve rolled directly from home on many previous adventures, and prefer my trips rely on just two wheels. My first big cycling tour was a coast-to-coast tour across Canada during a hot summer when much of British Columbia was burning. And during the Covid-19 pandemic, I pedaled a two-week, 360 mile loop around the Puget Sound to see the Salish Sea from the saddle after a friend asked, “Sure, you’ve biked on the San Juan Islands, but have you ridden to them?” I frequently ferry to Washington State Parks for bike overnights, and even take trains north to Skagit Valley in spring to tiptoe through the tulips. I had just returned from a 1000+ mile solo bike tour along the Pacific Coast Highway when I was invited on a unique opportunity to try bikepacking for the first time. The plan was to bikepack Vancouver Island’s 120-mile Cowichan Valley 8 route straight from our front door in Seattle, with the help of the Victoria Clipper ferry. While I’ve done extensive bike touring on paved roads,
bikepacking was a shift. Bikepacking requires traveling offroad on gravel trails that necessitate tires optimized for
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mountaineer | summer 2023
rougher terrain, including steep grades, gravel of all sizes, and “peanut butter” mud. You usually pack much lighter, for optimum balance, and plan to get a lot dirtier. I was eager to combine my mountaineering, backpacking, and bike touring experiences for this nearby bikepacking trip. To shift from a long cycle tour to this four-day gravel bikepacking adventure, I made a few minor adjustments to my steel frame touring bike, to my gear, and to my mindset. I invite you to come along for the ride.
Prepping for a multi-day bikepack Just like the proper footwear needed for through-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail or boot packing a glacier, the right tires make a bikepacking trip much more enjoyable. Because the Cowichan Valley 8 route is mostly gravel, I swapped my touring tires for a slightly wider and knobbier set, better suited for gravel because they allow more surface area to be in contact with the variety of gravel size. The wider tires meant I had to remove my rain-blocking fenders to allow for more clearance, but fortunately the weather forecast for late August was blueskied. To make the ride a little smoother, I deflated the tires to around 35-40 psi. This takes pressure off your joints by essentially adding some suspension to the ride which absorbs the vibrations of the gravel road.