Last year the guys from Velodirt went where no cyclists has gone before, the Oregon Outback. They created a route that lead them from the Southern border of Klamath Falls to the confluence of the Deschutes and Columbia Rivers. What was so special about this route is that it was primarily on dirt and gravel roads. Some of these roads haven’t seen bikes in a long long time (or if ever?)
Their tails of excitement got me going (it doesn’t take much). I needed to do this. But what would I ride? I knew that the VD guys road a mix of cross bikes and mountain bikes and strongly suggested the latter with a two inch tire. Usually in these situations I go for the faster approach with a skinnier tire. But over the winter I road with Dan Powell, Gabriel, and Jason on skinnier tires and I didn’t like it. Gabriel made a comment that it is similar terrain to what the Outback would have on it. That stuck with me. I knew I needed to not screw around because no one is around to bail you out. You’re out of cell phone range for miles in every direction.
Graham, Dan and myself had a handful of meetings on the topic but our “new to bikepacking/lack of experience” was showing. None of us had bikepacked like this before. I have done a handful of self supported tours by myself but they were always on a road/cx bike with either a trailer or panniers. This was new to me. Things pack differently, things ride differently. We decided to settle on a full rigid 29’er platform but how would we make it special? How could we give it that Ruckus touch?
Our chassis is the ultra fast Scott Scale 900 and we paired it with a Niner RDO fork. We talked about a lot of crazy ideas, putting water bladders inside the frame, tent poles inside the toptube, filling the seattube with redvines/beefsticks, internal batteries, bear spray mounts, tent stake mounts, knife mounts, we were going nuts with our brainstorming sessions. We also had to decide on what drivetrain, brakes and wheels to pair with it. We decided the end goal was that this is a bitchin’ mountain bike and should stay that way. Our scope changed from 100% bikepacking into “ride to your campsite, set up camp, shred trails, pack up and ride home” all on the same bike rather than a one trick pony.
But at the end of the day we decided to keep it “simple” and reliable. I didn’t want to rely on any “out-there” ideas when I would be out there.
With this focus we decided to simplify everything by putting on a SRAM XX1 drivetrain. The beauty of XX1 is that you really have 98% of the range you would need with a single cassette. I knew this would work extremely well with my current level of fitness. My wheel search was overly intensive and probably overly thought, how many spokes? what kind spokes? nipples? what kind of rims? what kind of hubs? what kind of tires? As I was running out of time I decided to simplify my decision by ordering up a set of Stans ZTR arch wheels with Stan’s The Crow tires. Tubeless rims with tubeless tires. Lots of sealant. This proved to be an awesome decision, the combo of the wheels and 2 inch tires kept me rolling quickly and smoothly while I was watching other set ups get bogged down in the loose lava rock.
We still wanted to make this bike unique with a few custom tricks, so we modified it to run all the cables / housing/hoses inside the frame. Doing so allowed me to remove all external cable stops; this made strapping on the frame bags significantly easier and then there wasn’t any cable abrasion/shifting issues to deal with. We also ran the Shimano XT brake hose inside the frame as well. Clean, lightweight, simple, and reliable.
One of the most talked about sections of the Oregon Outback was this 70 mile stretch that didn’t have any water sources. Nothing. Pack it in, sweat it out. So we added some extra h20 capacity to the fork legs by reinforcing them and adding h20 bosses to. We also added a “party cage” to the bottom side of the downtube. We usually reserve this spot for tallboys of Tecate but it could also hold a water bottle if times got desperate.
We used a pair of ENVE flat bars with Ergon race grips with bar end extensions. The bar end extensions turned out to be one of the best decisions I made. The extra hand positions were much needed as you slog through 12 hours of rough bumpy gravel and crave to put your hands somewhere else.
One of the coolest features we added to the fork was the ability to mount two waterproof cases. My thoughts were to have one case be first aid and the other to be bike tools. I figured if I needed medical attention or bike attention I don’t want to be digging through a “used” chamois to find bandaids. These boxes were one of the coolest features we added. We used GoPro mounting clips as a means to attach anything. These clips are quick and incredibly field proven. They are also easy to 3d print parts or extensions that mate with them. We can mount just about anything now (bear spray, knives, GoPros, slingshots, bb guns, etc…) You can then quickly disconnect them if you want to shred trails.
We then outfitted the entire bike with bags from Revelate, Eric has been making bikepacking bags for a long time now and really has thought of everything. So much so that I had no idea what some things did or clipped to. If something was needed there probably was already a way to attach it. I decided to run a frame bag, handlebar bag, gas tank, and large seat bag this was a perfect set-up for all the rough-terrain we encountered. It was also fairly new feeling to not have your gear affect your ride hardly at all.
One of the most fun aspects was coming up with the possible paint jobs for this rig. We originally had plans to paint it like BLM truck but we failed to come up with a fun scheme that didn’t it make look like an Ibis Hakkalugi so we ditched it. We ended up laying down a fun patchwork of colors and the masked it for a deep matte black top coat. Overall it is kind of a ‘funfetti’ scheme and we are pretty happy with how fun playful it is vs the normal solid color schemes.
Overall the bike we put together performed flawlessly. I had more than enough water, more than enough room to carry food (an entire chicken from Cowboy Dinner Tree) more than enough storage room. More than enough gear range (10-42!!), tubeless tires, all these things keeps the bike incredibly lightweight.
TL;DR
Ruckus made a super lightweight bikepacking bike.
We have it measured in a few different modes
- Trail mode: No bags, no gear, 3 water bottles. This is for when you already set up your campsite and want to shred local trails with pedals. 17 lbs 5 oz.
- Empty bag mode: 4 Revelate bags, 3 h20 cages ready to stuff with whatever you want. 22 lbs
- Travel mode: All my bags, all my gear, (no water). 32 lbs.