It was raining this morning, a perfect time to burning limbs, pine duff and other winter debris. While drying out I went down a YouTube rabbit hole and found: https://youtu.be/9kjhuYrLDpg about the Oregon Ramble Ride.
The route is on Bikepacking.com https://bikepacking.com/routes/central-oregon-backcountry-explorer/ and it starts in Prineville, the home of Les Schwab Tires. For those who went on the first McKenzie Pass ride I believe we went through Prineville on the day of the DEATH RIDE.
I have been giving some thought on how to couple e-bikes with multi-day bikepacking.
- Find campsites for each night that have power. Logistically difficult but not impossible. Campsites could be motels.
- Carry extra batteries. The super expensive option that also adds a ton of weight to each bike. You would still need power every other night or so.
- Have a support vehicle with either a larger inverter or small generator. If you watch the YouTube video they have support vehicles at the camp sites.
Charging time is an issue. For my bike with a Bosch motor and using the standard 4 amp charger it takes almost 5 hours to get a full charge. 50% in 2 hours or so. One can’t rely on charging while eating lunch or having a beer. Hopefully you don’t suck the battery dry but there would need to be a way to charge everyone’s batteries efficiently.