Bikepacking the Manistee National Forest: Part 2

Bikepacking serves me well in many ways; I get to satisfy my camping and exploring urges, i get to crank out some miles for "training" and i get to bond with good people on top of it all! When planning a good bikepacking trips it's important to rank what's most important on the trip, especially when you're bringing others along with. What's the skill level/fitness of your co-adventurers? What bikes/equipment will you be bringing? Are you using this as a training trip or is it a vacation to relax? What kind of scenery/terrain are you after? What "resources" do you need at your campsites (toilet? water? electricity? brewery?). It would be a shame to take the opportunity to have a great time and bungle it up by making the route too hard or choosing terrain that isn't suited to the bikes you're riding or trying to force others to death-march from dusk til dawn. Planning to me is half the fun, so i like to keep an open dialogue with the people i'm traveling with to determine what the trip should be. Once i've sorted through these questions then i begin making my route! (Note: i know this sounds like a lot, and yes it's fine to just say "hey let's go bikepack!" and take off, just trying to help folks avoid some pitfalls of past adventures).

My favorite bike to use bikepacking is a fatbike, you can ride through just about anything, it carries the weight well, it's stable when loaded, and they're just plain awesome! On this past trip both Tyler and i planned to use out fatbikes so pretty much any terrain was fair game, and with us both being adventurous and fit fellows the sky was basically the limit. A few things to consider when planning daily mileage is what the average pace might be and how much daylight you've got to work with. Personally i don't want to race out of bed in the morning into a damp chamois, pound pedals for 12 hours then roll into camp in the pitch black. It's nice to plan an hour or two in the morning to get your wits about you, have some coffee and a hearty breakfast and thoughtfully pack for the day ahead. I've found that in general the pace i end up covering is about 10-11 miles per hour regardless of the trip, so i plan on that. Rolling into camp with a few hours before sunset is always a good idea in case your desired camping area doesn't pan out, plus it gives you some time to clean up, setup camp and enjoy an awesome sunset if weather permits.

With our trip occurring in October I figured we'd depart camp between 9-10 AM and want to be done between 4-5 PM so 50-60 miles a day seemed pretty reasonable. Since we planned to carry a water filter and everything we needed the only stipulation for camp would be to be relatively close to some body of water. Over the years i've accrued many maps of wilderness areas in Michigan, but nowadays you can find pretty much everything you need online. The National Forest service map on the Manistee National forest is a great resource to start with, it's large and has many layers. The campgrounds are marked and if you search them online you can find the info on popularity, number of sites, facilities, etc.. Another resource i really like is the National Forest MVUMs (Motor Vehicle Use Maps). These are a great resource for all of the forest roads the cover the area (and there are many) as they show the roads and their corresponding number (typically 4 digits). MVUMs also have things like trailheads and campgrounds marked. If you're really getting adventurous you can get topo maps from a number of resources, personally i like to just download the ones i want from the USGS and print the areas i'm interested in on 8.5 x 11 in 1:1 scale.

With the maps in front of me i set out to determine which camp sites or areas in the national forest would make good places to hunker down for the night. For our October trip i knew we wanted to ride some singletrack, so i figured we would hit Big M along with the sections of NCT that allow bikes. The forest roads make a great option to avoid busier roads and further immerse yourself in the wilderness so i tried to link as many together as possible. Since we we agreed on making it a "challenging" route i looked for high points on the topo maps and overlooks to provide ample elevation. While it's fine to carry all of the food for the trip i figured since there's a few small towns around i'd route us through one for a re-supply to keep weight down and have access to ice cold refreshments. As I've mentioned before, i like to plan my routes out on Strava because it has the heatmap layer which other programs don't. This is a good way to see what locals are riding (or avoiding). You can also toggle the Strava segments on to see where some good climbs might be!

After the route was all planned out i sent it over to Tyler for review. It's always nice to let people see the route beforehand so they know what they're signing up for and it makes it harder for them to hold it against you later haha! The plan was to meetup after work on Friday, drive the 2 hours north to the starting point and camp out by the car. I chose a start point that we could both camp at and park the car for the entire trip which helps save on time shuttling around. Another good reason for choosing the Manistee National Forest is that it's the closest area to Grand Rapids that others a large expanse of state and government land to use along with many camping options, and it's less than 2 hours away. It was nice to arrive to camp with some time left before bed to enjoy a campfire, chat about the next day, have a few beers and transition from work mode to adventure mode. As the night faded the coyotes came out and hollered for quite some time (and continued to do so the entire evening) which made it feel even more remote and wild. The night before a trip is kind of like being a kid before Christmas, i often find myself wishing the time away so i can get to the next morning!

Stay tuned for Part 3!