Growing up, Daniel Connell loved bicycling on streets near his home in Cheviot Hills. In college, he began camping. But it wasn’t until he combined the two that his adventures really began.
Connell was bikepacking — backpacking by bike. Bikepackers are usually found off-road, pedaling up and down dirt trails and then finding sites to set up their tents and spend the night. With a bicycle, you can cover more terrain than by foot yet still access rugged trails closed off to cars.
In his early days with the sport, Connell rode from Santa Barbara to Medellin, Colombia, on a 1980s mountain bike he bought for $100. He then pedaled from Egypt to South Africa with a couple of friends. Last year, he completed a “Triple Everest” in Santa Barbara, riding the equivalent of three trips up the globe’s tallest mountain, more than 87,000 vertical feet. He also rode nearly 3,000 miles from Canada to Mexico on a route that traverses the Rockies in a self-supported race called the Tour Divide. This summer, he plans to set off from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska on his bike and eventually end up at the tip of South America in Patagonia in an effort to break the world speed record for the 13,500-mile ride. Much of the lengthy pedal will be along the Pan American Highway.
“I feel focused, incredibly free and alive when I’m on my bike,” says Connell, known in the cycling world as “Dirty Dan,” whose adventures are sponsored by the Trek Bicycle Corp..
Interested in trying bikepacking? Connell says novices should have “at least some exposure to trail riding and camping in the wilderness.” He recommends starting small: load up your bike with gear and just practice pedaling with all that extra weight. (His own Trek Supercaliber cross-country mountain bike weighs 55 pounds when completely loaded.) And go with someone more experienced. You can find bikepacking groups on Facebook, Meetup, Reddit or by checking your local bike shop. Topanga Creek Outpost, Connell says, is focused almost entirely on bikepacking.
Connell believes that Los Angeles is a great place for bikepacking “as long as you’re willing to get outside of the city center and up into the hills away from the cars. Here are six rides he suggests in Southern California, most of which come from bikepacking.com, a website Connell calls an “online bikepacking Mecca.” Note that the markers on this map are rough starting points for the routes. For the exact locations, visit the route websites.