Bike touring, bikepacking separated by thoroughfare

There's bikepacking and then there's bike touring, and there are a few differences.

Bike touring is what Harrison Maddox did for two weeks a little over a year ago in Japan and documented at Jason Alexander's website, bikepackingarkansas.com.

"There wasn't any off-road riding," Maddox says of his solo trip. He was mostly staying in hostels rather than camping and was pedaling a road bike, not a mountain bike.

Touring also is what 35-year-old Aaron Hanley and 30-year-old Erin Killeen are doing right now in South America. The pair flew from Fayetteville, with their Specialized AWOL road bikes and gear, in January to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, hoping eventually to reach Buenos Aires, Argentina, in December before coming home.

"The current rave of bikepacking is generally using frame bags and [riding] almost exclusively off-road and single-track routes carrying a minimal amount of gear," Hanley writes via email from Ponta Pora, Brazil, before crossing into Paraguay. "If I had to define what we're doing, I'd call it adventure touring."

The two are carrying their gear in the panniers that hang off the sides of their bikes. Their bikes also are outfitted with racks to carry other necessities. They add, however, that they are spending most of their nights camping.

"We've covered a large portion of Bolivia and up to Cusco, Peru," Hanley says. The plan is to head through Paraguay and reach the southern coast of Brazil, then on to Argentina through Uruguay.

Check out photos and stories from their travels at tourdelsur.wixsite.com/tourdelsur.

-- Sean Clancy

ActiveStyle on 10/03/2016

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