Best Bike for Bikepacking

[Charity85]

Good day Hubbers,

I am aware of the saying that the best bike for bikepacking is the bike you own, but having done a few excursions it appears that not all bikes are created equally for the task. I noted from my excursions that the gents that rode with me on the gravel bikes were having a much easier time of it with the mixed riding (road/gravel etc.). Any thoughts on this? Here is a picture of my current rig, would you hang on to same or dive into the gravel bike scene - considering I can only afford one proper bike at a time.

[PhilipV]

Well that depend on your route preferences. If you are only riding gravel and farm roads then a gravel bike is probably more suitable. 
but do you only do bike packing trips? Do you not want a lekker mountain bike for all your other rides (the one without bags?)

I like my routes to have gnarly roads and singletrack in it, so we use mtb’s with a more fast-packing type load out. 

[Dusty]

We have been through this conundrum and ended up with hardtail mtbs as our bikes of choice. We wanted a mtb to use as our everyday bike. But, in bikepacking, the ability to have a full frame bag, we found, is game changing. Decent hardtail mtb ticked the boxes for us.

I am currently training for a bikepacking race which is really a gravel race viz tar/gravel and I have put gravel tyres on my mtb. Not the perfect bike for the job, but it works.

Edited February 1, 2023 by Dusty