Our Pledge to Readers – BIKEPACKING.com

Much has changed in the decade and a half since this site was launched in 2012. Back then, PSY’s “Gangnam Style” was a global phenomenon, the iPhone 5 was freshly unveiled, and Barack Obama was in his first term as president of the United States. We were still putting “bikepacking” in quotation marks, and it was far from a household name with a vibrant ecosystem of niche products, purpose-built bike models, and digital creators devoted to the topic.

Despite all that’s different today, some things have stayed the same, at least here at BIKEPACKING.com. We still follow many of the same core tenets from the site’s nascent days as a blog documenting trips off the beaten path and sharing lessons from the road, and most of the key people from those early days are still actively contributing and advising.

In the spirit of openness with our reader community, I’ve been thinking we’re long overdue to offer a look behind the scenes, providing some insight into how our small team operates and the principles that guide us. Below is a seven-point pledge that I hope helps illuminate our mission, how we frame what we do, and the standards we want to uphold as we continue building this unique resource.

1. We Mean What We Say

On today’s internet, it can be tricky to figure out what’s genuine and what’s a paid placement or advertorial. Getting partway through an article only to realize you’ve been reading marketing copy designed to sell you something is irritating at best. We make things easy on readers by always being honest in what we write—no need to search for fine print or disclaimers. We’re not beholden to any brand or organization to publish anything or hold any particular point of view. Never have been.

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The extent of advertiser influence here on BIKEPACKING.com is limited to banner ads—clearly labeled as such—and logos in the footer. That’s it. Brands don’t have editorial input. If we publish a route in a particular place, share a piece from a guest contributor, or pen a review of a bike or bit of gear, it’s because we thought it was worth your time, not because someone paid us to promote it. Many brands have asked us how much we charge to write about their products, and our answer is invariably the same: Sorry, that’s not how it works. We don’t publish commission-based reviews or sponsored content, ever.

We occasionally use affiliate links in posts, which give us a tiny kickback when readers buy linked products, but the potential to make a few bucks doesn’t motivate us to share anything. As a majority member-funded site, we’re free to follow our interests and those of our readers, writing about the topics we choose. When it comes to reviews, we sometimes get to keep the products we cover. Other times, we send them back. Occasionally, we buy them outright or at a discount. Regardless, getting “free” gear isn’t why our team invests weeks or months into testing.

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We’re a resource first, and with our long-established platform and large reach, we feel a responsibility to create and share helpful, reliable information. If you’ve noticed that our reviews tend to skew positive, that’s simply because, like you, we value our time on the bike and don’t want to spend countless hours using, contemplating, photographing, and writing about products we know will be bad from the outset. Still, in any review, you’ll always find an honest assessment with objective cons and suggestions for improvement. Brands sometimes use this feedback to improve future product iterations, ultimately benefiting buyers. It’s far less common, thankfully, but if something is absolutely unviable from the get-go, we mail it back and let the makers know why we won’t be sharing it.

2. Experience Informs Our Perspectives

BIKEPACKING.com was never about anything other than the name implies, and we didn’t arrive here by chasing trends or pivoting for clicks. We live and breathe bikepacking. It’s our thing, and it always has been. Our tiny group of core contributors has more than 100 years of combined experience pedaling loaded bikes all over the planet.

Logan and I have toured across almost every continent combined and have covered all things bikepacking full-time for around 15 years. Before hosting our YouTube channel, Neil was a professional ultra-racer, setting records and winning high-profile races for a decade. Cass got his start pedaling between Australia and England via Central Asia in the late ‘90s, a journey that took two years. And our most senior regular contributor, Joe Cruz, bikepacked the White Rim Trail in Utah back in the 1980s and hasn’t slowed down since. The list goes on. All this to say: when you read an opinion here, it’s backed by real-world experience.

Still, we don’t know everything—I certainly don’t—and we’re not all equally versed in or captivated by every facet of cycling. Some of us are retrogrouches, and others are eternally eager to test the latest tech even before it’s released. A few of us are die-hard mountain bikers, and others prefer riding gravel on drop bars. Some on the team would rather deeply know every trail close to home, and others have an insatiable urge to see the world. We think this variety keeps our content dynamic, and we aim to balance staying in our respective lanes with dabbling in topics outside our areas of expertise.

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As regular readers know, despite our best intentions and deep well of insight, we don’t always get everything right. To that end, we will do a better job of being transparent when we’re exploring topics beyond our depth. When figuring things out on the fly—for example, with DIY gear guides we write as hobbyists or reviews of obscure new tech—we’ll make a greater effort to be frank and admit our shortcomings, offering readers an opportunity to share in the learning journey and creating a more productive space for dialogue.

3. Everything is Human-Made

As I wrote in my 2025 Editor’s Dozen, you won’t find any AI-generated content published by our team. Our stories, editorials, reviews, and routes are human-made, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. As someone who loves to write but rarely finds enough time to do so amid other responsibilities, there’s no chance in hell I’d let AI do the precious bit of writing I find time for. It’s unthinkable.

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We prefer to do things the old way, even if it takes far more time and effort. To date, our use of AI is limited to photoshopping out the occasional stick propping up a bike or adding the odd bit of sky to get an image to crop just right. Beyond that, unsavvy as it may be in 2025, I’m not the sole team member choosing to bury my head in the sand when it comes to artificial intelligence. Generously, I don’t know what half the tools out there are. And, at least as it pertains to writing, I suspect that anything AI generates about bikepacking is partly extracted from this site and then regurgitated in a half-accurate way. One unfortunate byproduct of this skip-the-source approach is that it costs us readers in real time, but that’s a whole other story for another post.

Rather than having ChatGPT spit out a ranked list of the year’s best hardtails, we’ll ride them, review them, and share our findings after careful deliberation. Instead of outsourcing opinion piece topics to a machine, we’ll listen to our instincts to figure out what will make for the most lively articles. And rather than using robots to determine the best way to connect points on the map and calling it a day, we’ll sweat up the roads and trails, shoot photos, gather essential context, and publish the finished route only when it’s close to perfected.

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We allocate a substantial portion of our budget to paying guest writers, photographers, and illustrators for their original work, which we’re proud to spotlight. There are so many creative people in the global bikepacking community, and we always prefer to compensate creators rather than replace them with machine-made crap. Rest assured, when one of our editors’ names is attached to a post, you never need to wonder: a real person wrote those words, shot those photos, and designed that graphic. We stubbornly insist on doing it this way.

4. No Stone is Left Unturned

We’re not always the first outlet to publish on every product or topic, and that’s by design. Part of what distinguishes us from many others in the bike media space is our long-term, in-depth approach. We’ll always opt out of the race to be the fastest if it means having extra time to formulate a more thoughtful point of view. Brands don’t always love it, and readers might get their information elsewhere as a result, but we don’t rush anything.

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In the same way that a good product should be thoroughly prototyped, tested, and refined before being offered to paying customers, we never want to make readers grapple with half-baked ideas, suffer through hacked-together routes, or make purchases based on surface-level product impressions. Being thorough is a hallmark of what we do at BIKEPACKING.com, even down to our daily news blips on the Dispatch. Other sites will often just copy and paste press releases verbatim, but we take the time to digest and share the essential details, usually with a hint of opinion or background.

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You can trust that any in-depth piece published here was created with great care and the time needed to do it right. It also received at least a glance from some extra sets of eyes before making its way onto the marquee. In the rare case that we publish something as a first look or from an otherwise superficial perspective, we’ll be clear about that from the introduction, so you know to take anything gleaned with a grain of salt.

In short, we won’t ever try to pass off something cursory as comprehensive, and we strongly believe in devoting the necessary time to fully develop every idea and opinion before sharing. This is far more costly than churning out shallow content to feed the algorithm, especially for a small team, but it’s the only approach that aligns with our mission.

5. Ingenuity and Originality Drive Us

When Logan and Virginia launched this website in 2012, it began as a blog—a simple way to document bike travel, share solutions to practical problems encountered while planning trips and riding, and connect with others in the touring community. At the time, scattered Blogspot and WordPress sites were how most travelers recorded their journeys online, and it was common practice to research routes using blog posts. Directions like “turn right just north of the village to find an incredible dirt road climbing into the mountains” were a trusted way to navigate.

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In response, we launched the Bikepacking Routes project back in 2014: a first-of-its-kind, mapped library of quality, rider-contributed bikepacking routes around the world. It was a way for fellow dirt-centric bike tourers to share special routes for others to enjoy. Around 130,000 miles and 500+ detailed route guides later, this project remains the backbone of BIKEPACKING.com as we continue to invest in, maintain, and evolve the network that benefits countless riders globally.

A sampling of our many routes with accompanying guides worldwide

Throughout our nearly 15 years, we’ve introduced many other firsts, including The Bikepacking Journal, the first print publication devoted solely to bikepacking; the first bikepacking events calendar; and the first comprehensive, open-access bikepacking guides in the form of Bikepacking 101 and Leave No Trace for Bikepackers.

We’ve also debuted a variety of original editorial series. To name a handful of favorites, we created the popular “Rigs of” series to offer a snapshot of race-ready bikes for events around the globe; the Rider’s Lens series, which regularly showcases the portfolios of bike-loving artists and photographers; and an ever-growing directory of Gear Indexes that offer a useful list of all available products in a given category.

Our spirit of originality and ingenuity will continue, as will our commitment to implementing design-forward features that prioritize clarity, depth, and utility across the site. We’re more than a bike media website; innovation, integrity, and purpose-driven storytelling guide everything we do.

6. This is An Inclusive Community

Our core team spans several countries and states, but we don’t have any illusions about being a particularly diverse group. That said, we’ve long prided ourselves on spotlighting all kinds of voices across the richly contrasting bikepacking community. More than just diversity and inclusion for its own sake, we believe the wide range of perspectives that constitute the bikepacking spectrum enrich it and can help create a more inclusive and equitable world.

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One of our guiding principles is to be a place where as many people as possible can see themselves reflected, which is why we offer space to a rotating cast of paid guest contributors from all walks of life. We aim to be inclusive of all backgrounds, budgets, skill levels, geographic regions, genders, interests, abilities, cultures, languages, and more.

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Representing all people is a tall order, but we’re confident we offer something for everyone in our coverage, and we’re devoted to curating a space where all readers feel they belong. Community is much more than a buzzword to us, and we love providing a platform for the wonderfully eclectic group of people who share our passion. We’ll continue working to identify groups we’ve overlooked.

7. We Create Value for Members

We’re supported by the longest-running membership program dedicated to sustaining independent bike media, the Bikepacking Collective, which we established in 2018. Our members make all our work possible, pay the salaries of our five full-time employees, and keep our growing archive of many thousands of posts paywall-free for millions of readers every year.

Knowing you’re being asked for money everywhere these days, we’re committed to offering unmatched value for Bikepacking Collective members. Really, we want to make supporting us an easy “yes” that’s more than worth your while and gives more than it takes. Yearly membership starts at $39, or about 75 cents a week.

Among the tangible benefits are access to the largest cycling/outdoor discount program anywhere, with around 80 brands currently offering exclusive discounts; bi-monthly Collective Reward giveaways worth tens of thousands of dollars each year (we’ve done more than 230 to date!); the option to receive The Bikepacking Journal in your mailbox; access to our buy/sell platform, Q&A forum, and ride partner finder via Basecamp; and having say in the topics we cover (and don’t) through member surveys.

Become a Member to Support Our Work!

If you like the sound of the points above and feel you’re on our same wavelength, we hope you’ll help enable our work and secure this one-of-a-kind site’s future by becoming a member of the Bikepacking Collective. We’re grateful that many readers answered our call for support last fall, but we still have a long way to go before our goals of being fully member-funded, having the means to pursue several large-scale projects on our long list of ideas, implementing valuable new site features, and further raising our rates for guest contributors, to name but a few.

By backing us as a Bikepacking Collective member, you not only give the gift of a free BIKEPACKING.com to countless readers worldwide and receive many practical perks, but you also ensure that we can continue to deliver on the pledges above and pour our hearts into everything we publish with enthusiasm and honesty, whether it’s route guides, long-term reviews, YouTube videos, essays, gear roundups, issues of The Bikepacking Journal, how-to tutorials, news, stories, or the new formats and series your membership contributions will make it possible for us to create. On behalf of the whole team, thanks for reading and for your support!

Further Reading

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