Hey guys,
My partner and I are going to tour the Carretera Austral in Chile and into Argentina. It’ll be 1200-1500km of riding, I’ve loosely planned to cycle 60-80km a day with plenty of stops for hiking and exploring.
Her bike is a Cube Nuroad C62, fully carbon, running 700×40 Schwalbe G-One tyres.
So far we have a bar bag (10l), and we will be strapping a daypack to the rear rack (30-40l).
As this bike lacks mounting points for bottle cages etc, I think I’ll get a partial frame bag so we can keep two bottle cages or a cargo cage in the frame.
My concern for this bike being so light is that we need to make sure all the weight isn’t at the back, one option is to install a Tubus Tara front rack and add some small panniers to the front to give her a little more storage on the bike and balance things out.
I’m also unsure if the tyres will be rugged enough once we are on the dirt roads, they are great tyres but I’m not sure how they will perform with weight added
We will only be carrying 2-3 days of food at a time, we will be cooking our own meals. There is plenty of water available so don’t need to carry too much.
I’d be interested in hearing your opinions on how to set this bike up and get some ideas, as I’m kind of going round in circles.
Ideally we want to make do with as much as possible, but the bike does need to be set up correctly to give us the best chance on this trip
Thanks!
by dtchch
2 Comments
I would **highly** recommend two feed bags. They attach next to your stem and handlebar. You can keep two bottles at the ready all the time. And most have mesh pockets around them where I store snacks.
I’d also recommend a frame bag that fills as much of your frame as possible. You don’t want to sacrifice so much good real estate for a bottle cage inside the frame. I also loves having a top tube bag for my phone, snacks, tools, etc.
https://preview.redd.it/hni2c7ynoz1c1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3bfe7fcf6177f2732024b8c3c3709de24a2436cd
I rode the Carretera on 40c Schwalbe Marathon Mondials and it was fine. The biggest issue will be how the bike handles the gnarly washboard bumps and if the cargo carrying system is up for it. I think a frame bag is good and I’d look for bikepacking bags instead of panniers for the rack(s). While panniers worked ok for me, better would be bags that can’t rattle and vibrate loose. I’d go for a dry bag on top of the rear rack instead of a backpack also.
It’s a fabulous ride!