Seat 1A on Delta 1914 with the most gorgeous view of Mount Rainier on departure.
Next stop, San Jose del Cabo!
Tag: Baja Divide
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Packing List
Here’s my final pack list, excluding food items:
Sleep System
- Appalachian Gear Company alpaca quilt liner (soft, comfy sleep sack for inside a quilt, or without it on a warmer night. 100% a comfort item!)
- Kammok Bobcat Quilt 40F
- Nemo Fillo Pillow w/ Pillow Strap
- Nemo Tensor sleeping pad
- Tarptent Rainbow DW w/ freestanding poles, tyvek ground sheet, stakes + sand stakes
- Helinox Chair Zero & Footprint (my other comfort item!)
Clothing
- Long & short finger gloves
- Outdoor Research baseball cap
- Patagonia NanoPuff jacket
- Patagonia lightweight pants
- All-Packa alpaca hoodie (comfortable, warm, cozy)
- Outdoor Research Sun Shirt
- 2x short sleeve shirts (REI & Showers Pass)
- lightweight, long sleeve Smartwool baselayer
- Bedrock Sandals
- Xero Scrambler shoes
- Columbia shorts
- Under Armor Compression shorts (used for riding, no pad)
- 2x socks for riding
- 1x wool socks for sleeping
- Halo Sweat Headband
- 1x underwear
- Lightweight merino wool Buff
Cooking & Water
- 1/2 Swedish dish cloth
- Camp Suds dish soap in dropper
- Bandana
- Bic Lighter
- Fire Starter – Cotton balls dipped in Vaseline
- Firebox Nano w/ grill plate and Trangia alcohol stove, bottle of 80% ethanol hand sanitizer for fuel
- Folding Plate
- Snow Creek Ti Low Pot & Tall Pot w/ Hot Lips
- Stasher Bags – Large, 2x Small (for cold soaking, or in bag cooking)
- Ti Tongs, Toaks long spoon, fork & knife, Spyderco Knife
- Ziplock Freezer Bags (trash, misc.)
- Hydrapak 2L bladder w/ Katadyn BeFree filter & drinking hose adapter
- 64 oz Klean Kanteen (w/ 2 Voile straps for mounting below the downtube)
- Hydrapak 3L bladder w/ drinking hose (sits in the framebag)
- Aquamira Tabs
- 28 oz cycling bottle (for electrolytes)
Tools & Safety
- 20’ microcord & 4 Loop Alien line locks
- Leatherman Pliers (thanks, John!)
- Ottolock & lightweight cable lock
- Whistle
- 2 oz Stan’s Sealant
- Altoids tin tire kit – Patches, Boots, Schrader adapter, needles, thread, shoe goo, extra tubeless darts
- Racer Dynaplug & extra preloaded plugs (rides in my framebag for accessibility)
- Chain Lube
- Chain rag
- Crank Brothers M19
- Extra Tube
- Latex Gloves
- Pressure Gauge
- Pump
- Tire Levers
Electronics
- Garmin inReach Mini satellite communicator
- 120V AC dual USB-C charger
- AirPods Pro
- 2x 10,000 mAH Anker battery packs
- Fenix Front & Rear Lights
- GoPro Hero 11, 4 batteries, charger, & GoPro Tool
- NiteCore Headlamp
- Kindle Paperwhite
- Mini Tripod w/ iPhone and goPro mounts
- Cables
- USB-C – Lightning
- USB-C – micro USB-B
- USB-C to USB-C (2x)
- USB-A to Apple Watch
- Wahoo GPS
- Fairy lights (I strung up a short strand in my tent for light. They run off my battery pack, consume minimal energy, and I can trim the strands to reduce the brightness if needed.)
Personal Care
- Chamois Butt’r
- Dr. Bronners soap
- Ear plugs (noisy campsites suck)
- Eyeglasses cloth & cleaner
- First Aid Kit (ibuprofen, naproxen, immodium, bandaids, leukotape, etc.)
- Gear repair tape
- Glasses case w/ glasses (to store either sunglasses or prescription RX, whichever is not on my face)
- Hand sanitizer
- Shit kit w/ The Deuce trowel
- Lotion bar
- Prescription medications
- Pack towel
- Suncreen stick (2x)
- Toothpaste tabs & travel toothbrusth
- Wipe pucks (lightweight and compact, they rehydrate with a few drops of water for your face, body, or butt.)
Everything that’s going with me, except clothes, the 3L Hydrapak, and the Lezyne pump. The light green bag (top, left of center) and purple bag (top left) are food, the red bag (bottom left) has personal care items. -
Last Minute Route Updates
As I get closer to departing for Mexico, I’ve made a few route updates. The first update is to route around a planned closure on day 1 just north of the San José del Cabo airport. Recent reports say the route is unridable due to deep sand and it may be closed to traffic soon. I can’t say I’m sad about skipping unrideable sandy roads, but cycling alongside the Carretera Transpeninsular heading north from San José del Cabo isn’t all that appealing, either.
With some extra time on my hands – I’m planning an off-route detour after my rest day in La Ventana. Instead of taking the highway east toward Los Planes and the coast, I am planning to take the Cardon Corridor trails and work my way east along the coast at Playa Turquesa out to the lighthouse at Punta Arena de la Ventana before heading south along the coast road. I’ll end the day at Enseneda de Muertos, hopefully with a beer and dinner at the one restaurant located along this section of beach, Restaurant 1535.
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A shakedown ride, and lots of travel
The past six weeks have been a whirlwind. I’ve been from Seattle to Orlando, Atlanta, Seattle, Mountain View, Seattle, San Diego, and back to Seattle. There hasn’t been much time for biking.
I did sneak away to ride part of the Teanaway River Link Up in mid-September. The winds were challenging, as were the climbs, but the part of the route I did was worthwhile. I learned a lot about how my bike handles with a full load.Overall the fit and ride were dreamy – I was comfortable during two days in the saddle. There may be minor tweaks in the future to the fit, but nothing significant.
Bikepacking the Teanaway Community Forest Since then I’ve been refining my camping kit and rethinking how and where I store things on the bike. I’ve purchased a Rockgeist Loop Bar Harness – my original plan didn’t work out, so I didn’t carry anything on my handlebars during the Teanaway Link Up.
Looking at the size and weight of the tubes that came with my bike I realized they are twice the weight (almost 450g) and size of a Schwalbe SV19F tube. I replaced the spare tube mostly for the space savings. Riding a small frame mountain bike means I have limited framebag space. With a 3L Hydrapak Seeker bladder in the framebag, I can now fit a much smaller tube and mount the Lezyne Micro Floor Drive HV pump inside.
I have also spent time thinking about my packing strategy. I always overpack for bikepacking trips. I need to reduce the volume and weight of my gear, especially since so much never gets used! I’ve trimmed down my clothing for Baja to a little more than half of one 13L Rockgeist Microwave pannier, leaving the remaining space for toiletries, and first aid. The other pannier will primarily serve as a food bag, with the hydration kit (filter, 2x 2L empty Hydrapak bladders, etc.), and an electronics kit (Kindle, battery pack, cables, 120V USB charger, GoPro charger, headlamp). Ultimately, I’ll try to balance the weight left to right in the pannier bags, nothing is fixed in place.
The heavier food, such as bagged cooked beans, peanut butter, etc, will sit on a fork leg, with the cooking kit on the other fork leg. My cooking kit consists of a Snow Creek Titatnium Mini Solo, Trangia alcohol stove, Firebox Nano X Case Kit w/ stainless grill grate, Toaks titanium cutlery, and a pair of titanium tongs. This set up allows me to cook over the alcohol stove using the Firexbox as a windscreen, or with sticks, twigs, or charcoal to build a fire inside the Firebox Nano to boil water or grill on top of the fire. Or I can just make a fire because I want to sit by the fire and enjoy the evening.
Finally, I’ve made a few route updates. I met a former bike industry executive through Facebook. She lives in Todos Santos and has offered me a place to stay for the night with a shower and hot breakfast. Bonus: She runs a dog rescue… lots of cute doggos!
My proposed route, starting from San José del Cabo working clockwise. Each color represents a planned riding day. Second, I’ve decided to cut out the trip to La Paz, saving myself ~30 miles of highway riding. Instead, I’ll route from el Triunfo via Los Divasaderos to La Ventana, where I’ll spend two nights to get cleaned up and restock the bike. I found a cute AirBNB there which should be perfect for my needs. Then I’ll to Enseneda de Muertos (it has been renamed by entrepreneurs as Ensenda de Sueños to appeal to property buyers…) for a night, before starting down the coast past Los Barriles, through Cabo Pulmo, and back across the mountains to San Jose del Cabo.
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Bikepacking Baja
In December 2022 my family and I spent a week in Los Barriles, Baja California Sur, Mexico. We stayed at a house near the beach just up the hill from the Baja Divide route. At the time, I had been bikepacking for two years. Through the pandemic I watched a lot of bikepacking videos, including Ryan van Duzer’s series on riding the Baja Divide. On our trip home, I said to my wife, “someday I’m going to ride the Cape Loop of the Baja Divide… maybe next winter!”
On the beach at Punta Pescadero along the Baja Divide route. (December 2022) Fast forward a few months. I got lost in travel, work, and family. I completed a few bikepacking trips over the summer, yet I had made no meaningful progress toward riding the Cape Loop. I didn’t have an appropriate bike or even a plan to tackle anything longer than an overnight trip.
In late July we returned from our family summer vacation in Europe. I turned 50. Suddenly, I had a lot of time to think about the upcoming year and what I want to do. At the same time, a friend became quite ill, reminding me that you’re never guaranteed tomorrow. This was all the inspiration I needed.
Sign along the beach road north of Los Barriles, BCS. (December 2022) “Steph, I want to buy a new bike, fly to Mexico, and spend 10 days riding and camping across the desert and mountains of Baja California. Alone. What do you think?”
She said, “Yes!” Over the next four days I purchased a brand new 2022 Bombtrack Beyond+ ADV, and a round trip ticket to San Jose del Cabo for early next year.
Let’s do this!
Street sign outside of Los Barriles, BCS. (December 2022)
Bikepacking for Nerds 
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