My inner bike geek likes looking at bikes wherever I go. All kind of well used bikes attracts my eye. Most of them tells a story, but most of the time I'm left to guess how the story goes. Sometimes I'm lucky, though. That's what happened when I catched a glimpse of a Yeti ARC on our local campsite the other day - with the rider on the bike.
The Ekeberg Camping is the most central campsite in Oslo, only a couple of kilometres up the hill from the Central Station downtown. I see a lot of nice touring bikes there, as I live right up the street.
But I've never ever seen a Yeti ARC there, sporting a rear rack! This is a legendary cross country racing frame, built with love in Golden, Colorado, rooted deep down in the history of the mountain bike sport. I've never even contemplated the possibility of seeing this bike with a rack!
I had to make a snapshot and a quick chat with the owner, Claus Tews from Germany - before I had to hurry on.
(Yes, that's a German super high quality Tubus Disco rack, folks...)
I forgot to ask if he really was out there touring Norway on a Yeti ARC with no fenders and knobby tires - or if he actually had a car, with the bike on the roof...
Luckily, I got his email adress, so I could get the whole story in my inbox later. Turns out it goes like this, big thanks to Claus for taking time to share the details:
The bike was my main mode of transportation throughout Norway!
I made a 3 week trip from Oslo -Gjovik - Lillehammer - Hatfjell Toppen - Otta - Rondane - Vagamo (MT Blaho) - Lom - Jotunheimen - Nigardsbreen - Sogndal - Stryn - Maloy - Floro / Bergen (both via Fjordline Ferry) - Rallarvegen and back to Oslo (via train), most of the nights putting up my tent somewhere in the wilderness.
I wanted to be independent as possible and therefore my bike and equipment to be as lightweight and versatile as possible. I pretty much wanted the handling of the bike to be typical "mountainbike" in order to being able to go offroad anytime!
I therefore reduced the equipment to only what's absolutely neccessary for being out in the nature on a 3 week trip - fenders, front racks or a even an air-pump or spare tube I considered "unneccessary" (instead I used a notubes.com tubeless sytem with sealant which I can highly recommend - even though I understand it was risky to not even bring a air-pump:-).
In the end I was able to reduce the weight of my equipment to:
- 8,9 kg for the bike and 16,5 kg for the bags+equipement (incl. tent and sleeping bag)
The 16.5 kg don`t seem to be that lightweight, but one have to consider that it includes: a netbook (1.5 kg which I had to bring..), a camera body with 3 prime lenses (2.5 kg), 2 books (1 kg), binoculars (400gr) and food (milkpower, eggpowder, pemmikan, dehydrated meals..) for three weeks. I also slept on a feather filled air mattress (990 gr) - which will bee by a standard lightweight camping mat next time.
So without all that stuff I would be under 9 kg!
You were interested to see the bags I used, so I attached a picture with the fully loaded bike. The bags are 3 x 20 liter dry bags from Sea To Summit.
The whole system was less than 450 gr (without the rack of course)- so I saved approx. 1,5 kilo in comparison with the popular Ortlieb bike bag system. It only required some dilligence while packing, because it was a hassle to load and/or unload the bags.
A true adventure, indeed. Thanks for the shot and the story, Claus - see you around next time!
