ICELAND BIKEPACKING GEAR BREAKDOWN | Rebecca Rusch

A new fat bike, bike packing gear breakdown video right when you needed it most!
Rebecca takes us through a piece-by-piece breakdown of all the gear she used during her Iceland expedition with Chris Burkard & Angus Morton in early 2021.
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All right welcome to my iceland crossing hotel on wheels this is my setup um that i used for this expedition so i’m going to take you through a little bit of the rhyme and reason and the equipment that i used all right so i’m going to start with the

Body what i was wearing i’m a big fan of wool base layers so on the feet um two pairs of wool socks a thin liner and a thicker one and Let’s see belissio apparel wool base layer three quarter length long undies wool also essential item the bike shorts that yeah we wore for a week velocity apparel bike shorts and Then on over that stuff so that stayed at the base layer all the time i also wore a cycling jersey from valisio apparel i really like having pockets and i use those for keeping batteries warm and keeping things next to your body your body actually becomes a little heater in

Really cold environments so i like to wear a cycling jersey so i’ve got internal pockets and then a soft shell vest also from blosso and key item that i really like for any sort of cold weather aerobic activity sweat is a really big sweat is your enemy and so any sort of

Moisture that you’re developing while working hard on the bike needs to be vented because if you get wet then you get cold and so i’m a big fan of all my zippers being bottom up zippers it’s a really nice way to vent up instead of down especially if you

Want to keep a hood on you want to keep your head warm you can always unzip from the bottom These were my main riding pants a 66 norris soft shell i’m a big fan of soft shell for fat biking just because it breathes a little bit more unless it’s really storming out so these are my main riding pants they’ve got cinches around the ankle so you can keep the snow out of

Your boots and then also 66 north soft shell riding jacket for the same reason this will break the wind and it’s not quite as hot as a full on shell but still a bit waterproof and with a hood super essential to have hoods on your jackets let’s see on my head

Headband to always keep the ears warm neck gator and a little wind stopper cycling cap that i really liked um so that was on my body the whole time then let’s take you through the bike i’ll just go front to back so helmet you can’t buy those that’s a little bit

Of custom job the boots that i wore are 45 north those have been alaska all over the place the great thing about that they’ve also got wool liners that you can take out you can put a vapor barrier plastic bag in between the liner and the shell those are waterproof

And we also did do some stream crossings so pretty essential to keep your feet dry front pocket here in this revelate bag this was kind of my technology pocket so this is where i’d have chargers i have my smith goggles pretty important for a windy environment to have goggles to totally protect your

Face and then i also had a pair of glasses with clear lenses and really dark lenses for the sun a pair of those also with a lot of coverage keep your face out of the wind in this front roll bag here this was my big agnes zero degree sleeping bag and

Sleeping pad so this would kind of stay on here and you don’t really get to that at night until night time so anything that you don’t really need access to all the time is going to go in the front roll and the way you set up your bike

There’s a lot of sort of thought put behind where you put things because when you’re in the environment you want to know exactly where things are exactly how to get to it which pocket it’s in and it needs to make sense so if i needed something during the day that’s

In this front bag you know it’s a big ordeal to get it out so you hide the things away that you aren’t going to need as often and then you bring things near the top that you’re going to need more often during the day you’re also thinking about weight distribution of

Where you put the gear so the heaviest items you want to have low center of gravity and close to the frame otherwise if you’ve got a lot of weight out on the ends it makes the bike handle pretty poorly so it made us seem like i threw all this

Stuff on here but there’s a lot of years of experience of like exactly where things need to go so you can find them when you need them so the cockpit setup is kind of important too because this is where this is where the action happens so you’ve

Got your navigation i’ve got a garmin edge 1030 on here things that you want to access quickly two water bottles an insulated one and a mirror thermos super essential for me to have a thermos for warm fluids especially in a cold environment one of the quickest ways to warm up is to warm

From the inside out and and have a thermos a warm drink and there’s it’s it’s not that nice in a super cold environment to be drinking icy cold snowy water so thermos always comes with me even though it’s a little heavier it’s it’s totally worth it these um are

Revelate design pogies and they’re kind of weird when people see these you’re like what are those big things on your handlebars but keeping your hands warm especially you need to be shifting and breaking and using them keeping your hands warm is a really important part of the process but

They also work for kind of like these little chipmunk storage areas so i end up keeping food in here so you can like pre-warm food um everything freezes out there so your bars all your nutrition it’s gonna freeze so you can put it in

Here for a while get it warm so then you can eat it i also keep my gloves in here so i’ve got my 66 north liner gloves these are on all the time um i also brought i brought three pairs of gloves so a liner glove a mid weight glove

And then an over glove and i size these all so that they can fit on top of each other it’s a system i’m not going to just put on the liner or something else i can put on the liner i can put this on over it and i could put

This on over it so the the big gloves need to fit over everything and that’s pretty important people always ask why don’t you use a mitten it’s warmer well you can’t really do anything with a mitten on so it’s important for me to just have an oversized glove that this can be like

Three layers of gloves if needed so those all stay in there and i put the right hand glove in the right hand pogie the left hand glove and the left hand poggy and it’s a simple thing but it’s kind of one of those important things you’re like where’s my gloves

I also have these pockets under here that i keep snacks and most importantly i keep hand warmers right here so that um if i need to put them in the pogie you need to put them in my glove they’re right there super accessible this is the trough so that’s the little

Snack food bag and i pack that up for the day full of everything most of the things that i’m going to want for the riding for the day because it’s really accessible the nice thing about this revelate designs it’s called the mag tank the awesome thing about it is it’s got a magnetic

Thing so you can open it while you’re riding and you can close it back up and it closes up really nicely which is great in here goo energy i’ve got one i made some homemade cookies um there’s still some bacon in here this is one of my this is my secret

Go fast training food so those are all snacks in this one i keep a bike tool that’s really accessible at all times and a little mini a little mini leather man and i have my icelandic flag that i carried along the way i had it up here but i didn’t want

To break it so i’ve got that in there and then i also use this little this little bag for trash management and as you’re eating and getting all your wrappers there’s nowhere to put your trash so this also becomes a really easy trash bag so if i get to a place i just

Quickly empty it out and get rid of the trash um and like i said you want the weight here on the middle of the bike so in here are my bike tools in a tool roll i won’t go through everything but um yeah definitely some essentials extra cleats for pedals

You know tire lever changers um a few bolts and extra things for the rack so those are my tools and then i also had extra hand warmers in here and a bike tube and we each carry two tubes we used one of them and then let’s see this pocket here is

Um a little bit of technology so there’s chargers cords a gopro some stuff like that often i would have this on my body in my bike jersey to stay warm keep it warm i had an extra collapsible water bottle so we could if we found a stream it’s

Just easy to fill but it also is smaller than a traditional water bottle when it’s empty i had this i wore this a lot i had this velocio apparel really really thin um lightweight wind protection jacket but it’s also got venting so it’s pretty windy in iceland and sometimes it’s just

Nice to put on a really thin layer that wouldn’t make you hot but would would cut the wind so i wore that a lot into so small it basically takes up no space at all this is my little my little personal bag with toothbrush and some let’s see what else is in here

Toothbrush sunscreen shammy butter all the good stuff is in here some toilet paper yeah that’s it in there and That also had some extra food in it when we were riding that was another good place to keep keep food stash on the other side of this pocket i’ve got a pump and a headlamp and an extra headlamp and then i had a bike i have a bike

Light right up here on the fork and then some extra straps and it’s like a circus car more stuff keeps coming out um and batteries lithium batteries um only batteries that you can use in the cold um you definitely don’t want to bring regular batteries because they won’t they won’t

Work for very long and all of all my devices you could use they have a rechargeable battery in them for my lights but you could also put in external batteries so i kind of had the best of both worlds with those and we didn’t have to ride that much at

Night so i didn’t really have to use use a lot of that stuff um okay back to the back of the bike these were things again that i would want access to during the day so this is really a lot of my insulating layers and stuff that i might

Want to pull out really quickly so i organize it so that my storm gear and waterproof gear is all together so i’ve got 66 north shell pants i really like these because they have a really long zipper so i could put these on without taking my boots off super

Important if you’re out there and you’re freezing and you want to put your pants on and it got them a little bit oversized so that it would be they could fit on pretty easily 66 north shell jacket really bomber for the icelandic weather i went for the like the beefiest jacket they had

And i definitely wore this a bunch and some extra straps that were holding these are my food bags we forgot to talk about these so these little fork bags that’s where i had my dehydrated meals um and my breakfasts and dinners but i ate them all so they’re empty now

I have some plastic bags in case we had to go into really deep water that was over boot top we had the option of actually putting these on cinching them up we didn’t need to do that one the river crossing we did do we just pulled our pulled our

Pants down over the tops of our boots and you can you can make a strap to keep the water from coming up through so we did do that that was pretty handy puffy coat 66 north this is a synthetic insulating jacket and i also took this jacket and i ended up taking two

Insulating jackets two thinner ones instead of one big giant one because the layering system was more um more adaptable whereas i could put on both these coats or i could just wear one of them and really most of the time i just ended up wearing the one i didn’t

End up needing to put on both at the same time but nice to have super lightweight and it’s better than one big giant expedition coat in this bag and i put a lot of my things into extra waterproof bags because just because um if it’s storming these

Are waterproof but you don’t want any water to seep through the zipper and get all your extra clothes all your extra clothes wet so in here i have extra hat full on balk lava extra wool neck gators and another strap and then this bag it’s pretty empty now

But it was full of food eight days worth of food and i ate it all not all of it but a lot of it and when i plan my food i plan out how many days how many calories per hour how many electrolytes how much carbohydrate how much protein how

How much weight and calories you’re getting so there’s a lot of uh there’s kind of a scientific scientific planning for me to the food because the energy is really important and if you if you don’t blow it or if you don’t pack well or you don’t like

Your food or you don’t want to eat it when it’s frozen then it’s kind of a game changer so this is also a waterproof stuffed sack to keep my other layers dry in here i have my jetboil stove a windscreen a spoon a lighter fuel it’s all packed up in there

Oh and i had this little mini shovel this was fun we used this a lot this is pretty handy little guy for um chipping out snow or you know whatever you need to do with it and let’s see what else and then a few more layers so i also

Brought a full set of extra base layers in case things got wet so extra pair of really warm socks that i’d wear in the camps extra pair of wool long undies extra velocity wool top and a little bathing suit for the hot springs which i’ve never taken a swimming suit

On a fat bike expedition before but that was a mandatory piece of equipment it was pretty awesome and oh and i have a hydration bladder in case we needed to carry more water for capacity and when that was full it would fit in the frame bag to keep the weight on the bike

So that is all the equipment small blinky light for safety on the road and my bike is the giant yukon and let’s see nvm 585 carbon wheels 45 north studied tires and sram drive train uh crank brothers mallet pedals and i do i do clip in because

I like to clip in so these boots are kind of cool um they they obviously they have the cl cleat on the bottom and i put studs into them as well so uh walking on ice and everything you’re going to get more traction more traction with your boots

I ran also the one by you know eagle sram eagle i have grip shift in here and some sort of some alterations that i do on my bars you can’t really see it but um grip shift the reason i use grip shift fat biking is it’s just easier to

Rotate your hand instead of pushing with your thumb to shift so it’s a lot more natural position while you’re in there a single front chainrings means you’re only shifting on one hand and then i’ve also really padded um with bar tape and some gel padding to make my handlebar quite

Thick so that there’s not as much um pressure right on your nerves in your hands because you’re putting a lot of weight on your hands so it’s a pretty padded up handlebar system and then i’ve also got a teeny little bar and in here that’s

Just sort of an angle so that i can change my hand position from here to here and just kind of be comfortable because your hands really kind of get a beating out on these expeditions and what did i forget old man mountain rack um i think that’s it that’s the hotel on

Wheels and i used everything that i brought which i’m pretty excited about but like i said i never have the same setup twice it’s always specific um to the expedition i’m doing and the terrain i’m gonna find there’s a similar setup but really um i did change a few things for iceland like

Bringing you know more rain gear and some more plastic bags and some extra things to make sure i could survive uh crossing the icelandic highlands in winter but we did it it worked The iditarod trail 2020 is absolutely the hardest expedition i’ve done in my life if we’d gone in knowing the conditions would be this way and that it would be that hard i’m not sure we would have signed up for it