Into the Mendips with Some New Gear
As lockdown eases in the UK and we're starting to be allowed out in larger groups again, a loose plan for the first bivvy of 2020 spontaneously turned into a foray into the Mendips for a meeting of old friends and new, making connections between London, Bath and Bristol. It also finally gave me the opportunity to use a set of new bags, primarily bought for the Hook. I've been toying with the idea of trying a more traditional bag design for a while now, especially up front. Over the years I've used handlebar setups made by Wildcat, Revelate Designs, Alpamayo Designs (my preferred arrangement for my mountain bike for the last few years but who, sadly, are no long in operation) and Apidura.
The standard bikepacking handlebar 'sausage' bag is great for stuffing full of lots of compressible items, but they can be pretty awkward to use at times. Their application with drop bars especially, can be frustrating, as the useable width is limited and access whilst on the bike damn near impossible. Yes, you can just pack your sleeping system up there and aim not to need access during the day, but sometimes it would be nice to be able to grab additional layers quickly, or to throw in excess food without having to play tetris in your frame bag. And whilst those front setups that are essentially a drybag in a harness can be removed relatively easily, the lighter bags that mount directly to the bars can be a faff to take off each day to access the contents, especially if you've got a jigsaw of other bags and gear competing for handlebar space, sharing straps etc.
Cass Gilbert was using a Goldback bag, made by Jay Ritchey at Bags By Bird, when we rode in mid-Wales last year. Seeing him casually drop in lunchtime deli food hauls whilst I struggled to attach my pastries and cheese with straps to my seatpack in a manner that meant that I didn't either loose them mid-ride or squash them into a mush, led me to get hold of a set of Goldbacks. They arrived just as pandemic restrictions started to hit around the world, and so other than a few trips to the supermarket, this was the first time I've got to use them properly.
The bags can be used both on the bars or as a seatpack, and consist of one main compartment with a pocket on either side. Both the main section and pockets are nicely shaped to make maximum use of available space between bars / saddle and frame whilst maintaining a streamlined profile, presumably for improved aerodynamics (lol) and to avoid snagging on brake levels/gear shifters and vegetation... The bottom of the bags are curved which really works with the shape of most camping gear that is generally packed in some kind of stuff sack or dry bag, although I've discovered that square packages from the supermarket, are a little less easy to pack in efficiently. But I've still managed to use these two bags for a weekly shop, and the curved shape makes the most efficient use of the the available space on the bike, so I'm good with the compromise, if thats what it is. Mine are constructed of X-pac, but Cordura and waxed canvas are also options.
Attachment to bars or saddle is via two voile straps, with a third strap at the base to wrap around the headtube or seatpost. Two birch dowels at the attachment points - the top one inside the bag, the bottom one on the outside - combined with an HDPE plastic rigid liner give the bag shape and structure and keep things super stable. Never having used them myself, I've always been a little skeptical of the robustness of designs using wooden dowels, but I guess there's a reason that they've stood the test of time. Using two dowels, and particularly when the lower fastening strap is attached as close to that lower dowel as possible, seems to make these maintain their structure really well and keep them surprisingly solid. Whilst I can feel the rear bag touching the back of the top of my thigh when pedalling, it's not really an issue and I've quickly stopped noticing it. There are a host of other features but rather than repeat them here, you should take a look at the product pages, or the FAQ where theres a handy graphic showing all the features.
Mine are a small size at the front, and a medium at the back, made slightly narrower so it's roughly the same width as the small. In hindsight, I could have potentially pushed the sizing up a little. The width of the front bag was sized to fit between my previous 44cm-wide Salsa Cowchipper bars, but I've changed these up to the Ritchey Venturemax XL (52 cm wide!) so of course there's now quite a lot of spare space. Having said that, I do like being able to grab my bars and shift gears easily without getting caught up on the bags, and if they were larger I'd just be tempted to fill them anyway. I think that the capacity of the front bag is around 13 litres and the rear 15 litres (excluding pockets and use of the longflap), so they are comparable to the other bags I've used, but with a lot more flexibility, extendability and easy of access.
The pockets are surprisingly large - I squeezed two small gas canisters into one with ease, with space for more stuff to be packed in on top. Both the pockets and main lid fasten with side-release buckles which, on the lid, can be used to cinch things up tight. The main compartment has an inner skirt that closes with a drawstring to keep things secure and help keep the weather out. It also has an additional strap that reaches across the top of the bag, over the skirt but under the lid, to compress the bag when not full to capacity, or just provide a bit of extra stability when stuffed to the brim or carrying a heavy load.
The lid has an extendable longflap which has already been super useful - easily holding a bag of toilet rolls (supplies picked up on the way home; hopefully no-one needs that much loo roll for a one-night night bivvy!), on top of an already packed main compartment bag, or enabling me to carry a shoe box sized parcel to the post office. That additional compression/stability strap isn't long enough to reach over an extended load where the skirt isn't drawn tight (the shoe box example above) but can be used as normal where an additional load is packed on top of the skirt and held in place by the long flap (the toilet roll example!). The extended flap provides plenty of coverage to secure whatever it is you stuff under it, as long as it's of reasonable size.
As easy as they are to pack, I think that it's still important to consider how you pack them, placing heavier items low, central and close to the bike. Whilst the bags are probably more forgiving in this respect that a long drybag - one side might not droop much if you load it up with a pack of beers, and the voile straps do a great job of keeping the bag in place on the bars - you can still feel the impact of bad packing on the steering of the bike. For some idea of the size, what you can see in the first four images below are my Enlightened Equipment 40F quilt, Mountain Laurel Designs eVent Soul bivvy and Sea to Summit Ultralight Insulated pad placed loosely in the bottom of the bag. There’s loads of space left for clothes, stove & food, especially when the soft items are squashed down. One key difference between using these and a sausage dry bag is that compressible items such as a down quilt or jacket really need to be packed into a stuff sack or dry bag to make packing efficient. Normally I would just stuff them directly into my bar mounted drybag and compress that down to keep things tight, but in these bags, gear like that will just expand to fill the space. This is probably. also a good idea for protection from the damp - whilst the fabric of these seems bombproof and I’m sure will keep the weather out, the nature of the designs means that they can’t be considered totally waterproof.
So far, I'm impressed. I plan to use these as my standard setup on the Hook, and might also see how they feel on the Jamis Dragonslayer when I start using that again for some rougher trips.
Aside from trying these out properly for the first time, it was really lovely to ride with a larger group and sleep outside under a big old tree for first time in 2020, although with this being by far the most exercise and socialising I've done in months, I felt wrecked for the entire week after...! Fingers crossed for lots more trips like this through the rest of the summer and into autumn, but I guess I need to ease back into some kind of normal life a little gently...
Full disclosure: Jay sold these to me at roughly trade cost, in return for supplying some photos of the bags in use, as and when I'm able to take them. He didn’t ask me to write any kind review (and in fact doesn’t know I’m writing this), and these thoughts are all my own.