How to Plan a Bikepacking Route for Beginners

Published May 15, 2026

Most first bikepacking trips fail at the planning stage, not on the bike. The rider buys gear, watches videos, talks themselves into being “almost ready,” then never picks a route — because picking a route from the open internet, with no constraints, is genuinely hard. You can ride anywhere. So you ride nowhere.

This guide is the antidote. We’ll walk through bikepacking route planning the way we actually do it for our own trips: starting from a campsite (not a map), using Komoot or Ride with GPS to handle the routing, and checking the result against the four things that determine whether a route will be enjoyable or miserable.

Plan backwards from the campsite

The instinct most beginners have is to open a routing app, draw a loop or a there-and-back from their house, and see where it ends up. That sequence works for a day ride. It doesn’t work for an overnighter, because the destination has constraints — it needs to be a place you can legally sleep, ideally with water and a flat tent pad, ideally booked in advance.

So flip the order. Pick the campsite first, then plan how to get there. Concretely:

1. Open your state parks website or Hipcamp and filter for sites within ~30 miles of home.
2. Check availability for your target weekend. Plenty of state parks book out three weeks ahead in summer; the site you want may already be gone.
3. Pick a site that has water on-tap (a spigot or a campground well). For trip one, “primitive” sites with no water are too many variables to add at once.
4. Book it. Now you have a fixed endpoint, which makes the routing problem solvable.

We covered the 30-mile rule in detail in our S24O guide — the short version is that anywhere closer than 30 miles is a problem you can ride out of, and anywhere further is a problem that needs rescuing. For a first overnighter, stay inside that radius.

Once the destination is locked, the route question becomes “what’s the most pleasant way to bike from here to there?” That’s a question Komoot and Ride with GPS can actually answer.

Komoot vs Ride with GPS: which to use

Both apps will route a bike-friendly path between two points. They’re more similar than different, but the differences matter for bikepacking specifically.

Komoot

Komoot’s strength is its surface-type data. Plan a route in “gravel” or “bikepacking” mode and it shows you exactly how many miles of asphalt, gravel, dirt road, singletrack, and “bad path” you’ll cover. That’s the single most useful piece of routing data for bikepacking, because surface drives speed, tire choice, and whether the loaded bike will make it.

Pricing as of May 2026: Komoot Premium is around $60/year. The single-region package (one region, lifetime) is $9 — most beginners just buy their home region and skip Premium.

Komoot wins on honest surface breakdowns, better defaults for unpaved-tolerant routing, and reliable offline maps. It loses on turn-by-turn voice cues (mediocre) and route editing (drag-to-modify works but feels clunky).

Ride with GPS (RWGPS)

Ride with GPS is the long-time leader for road and gravel cyclists in the U.S. The Basic tier ($60/year as of May 2026) unlocks offline maps, which you need.

RWGPS wins on a cleaner route editor, better voice cues, a strong community route library, and a “heatmap” overlay that shows where riders actually go — massively useful for finding unmarked rideable roads. It loses on surface granularity and lacks a true bikepacking routing mode.

Which to pick

For most beginners in the US, Komoot for routing, RWGPS for navigation in the field is the pairing we use. Komoot’s surface breakdowns prevent the “I didn’t know there’d be 8 miles of singletrack” mistake; RWGPS’s clearer voice cues mean you don’t have to keep looking at your phone screen.

If you only want to use one app, start with Komoot for trip one. Buy your home region for $9 and call it done.

A third option, Trailforks, is worth knowing about but isn’t a routing app — it’s a database of mountain bike trails. If your route uses any singletrack, Trailforks tells you the difficulty and current trail conditions, which neither Komoot nor RWGPS does well.

The four checks every route needs

Once you’ve drawn a route between home and your booked campsite, run it through these four checks before committing. Most “bad first trip” stories are a route that failed one of these.

1. Total distance and time

Loaded-bike time is not unloaded-bike time. Expect to ride 20–30% slower with a full kit on terrain you’ve ridden before, and 30–50% slower on terrain you haven’t. A 25-mile route that takes you 1:45 on a Sunday day ride will probably take 2:30 to 3:00 loaded.

Compute the expected arrival time. Add a 45-minute buffer for things that go wrong (a flat, a wrong turn, a 15-minute snack stop that becomes 30). If your estimated arrival is after sunset, the route is too long. Cut it.

2. Surface type

In Komoot, look at the surface bar at the bottom of the route view. For trip one, our rule of thumb:

• 80%+ paved or gravel road: great. Go.
• 60–80% paved/gravel, rest is dirt road or easy doubletrack: still fine, plan a bit more time.
• More than 20% singletrack, “path,” or “bad path”: dangerous for a first loaded ride. Reroute.

Loaded bikes handle differently on technical surfaces. The wobble that’s annoying on a paved climb becomes a falling-over problem on chunky singletrack with a 6kg seat pack.

3. Climbing

Look at the elevation profile. Total climbing matters less than where it sits in the route. We’d much rather climb 1,200 feet evenly across 25 miles than 600 feet concentrated in the last 5 miles — tired legs plus a steep climb at mile 22 is where people bail.

Specifically: if the last third of the route has more than 40% of the total elevation gain, reverse the route or pick a different one. Better to climb tired-legs in the middle, not at the end.

4. Bailout points

Mentally trace the route and identify the bailout options. A bailout is anywhere you could reasonably stop, get a ride, or call it. Useful bailouts:

• Towns with cell service and a gas station
• Trailhead parking lots someone could drive to
• The crossing of a major road that’s easy to describe to a partner picking you up

A good route has a bailout every 8–10 miles for an overnighter. A great one has bailouts at predictable mile markers. A bad route has 30 miles of no-cell-service forest where if anything goes wrong you’re solving it yourself.

Water and food resupply

The single planning step that separates a comfortable first trip from a brutal one is figuring out where you’ll get water.

For a 25-mile route with one overnight, you’ll drink roughly:

• 1.5–2.5L on the ride out (more in heat)
• 1–2L at camp (cooking + drinking)
• 1.5–2L on the ride home

That’s around 4–6 liters total per person. At 1kg per liter, carrying it all from home is a brutal start. Don’t.

What we actually do: carry 2L from home, refill on the road. Map your refill points before you leave:

• Gas stations and convenience stores — the most reliable. Mark two or three along the route.
• State park visitor centers — usually have a spigot outside.
• Trailhead pit toilets — some have a hand-pump well; check the park’s website.
• Campground water at your destination — check that the campground has on-site water, not just a “water available 2 miles away” technicality.

Avoid filtering creek water on trip one unless you have to. It works, but it adds a piece of gear, a skill, and a contamination risk you don’t need to take when there’s a Shell station 4 miles up the road.

Food resupply is easier: most overnighters within 30 miles have at least one gas station or small grocery on-route. Plan to grab dinner ingredients (or just a sandwich) at a stop closer to the campsite, rather than carrying everything from home.

Elevation: the number that lies to you

Routing apps report total elevation gain, but the number is consistently misleading. Three traps:

• GPS noise. Komoot and RWGPS often overestimate gain by 10–25% on rolling terrain because GPS altitude jitters and the algorithm counts every small bump. A 2,000-foot route is often closer to 1,500 real feet.
• Grade beats total. 1,500 feet across 25 miles is a relaxed day; 1,500 feet packed into three steep walls is a hard day. Look at the grade profile, not the total.
• Loaded bikes climb worse. Lower power-to-weight than your usual day bike. Budget extra time for any segment over 6% grade.

Sanity check: find a Strava segment that overlaps your route, take the average completion time, add 20–30%. That’s your realistic pace, not the routing app’s estimate.

Why we still print a paper map

Your phone will die, get rained on, or lose signal at the worst possible time. We carry a paper map every trip, and we strongly recommend you do the same.

What to print:

• A screenshot of the full route, including the campsite location
• Turn-by-turn cues for the first and last 5 miles (where most mistakes happen)
• Phone numbers: the campground, an emergency contact, the nearest non-emergency police
• The address of the nearest hospital and the closest 24-hour gas station to the route

Stick it in a gallon ziplock bag and put it in your top tube bag or jersey pocket. It weighs 5 grams. It’s saved us twice.

This isn’t a substitute for the phone — it’s a backup. The phone is still your primary navigation, because following arrows on a screen is genuinely faster than reading a paper map at a junction. But when the phone fails, the paper map is what gets you home.

A worked example

Here’s how we actually planned a recent S24O, start to finish:

1. State park 22 miles from home. Walk-in tent site, $14, booked the previous Sunday.
2. Drew the route in Komoot in “bikepacking” mode — 24 miles, 1,800 feet of climbing, 60% paved / 35% gravel / 5% dirt road. No singletrack.
3. One manual reroute. Komoot defaulted to a state highway with no shoulder for 3 miles; swapped to a parallel county road that added 1.5 miles.
4. Marked water stops at miles 9 and 17 (both gas stations), bailout points at miles 12 and 18.
5. Exported the GPX from Komoot into Ride with GPS for in-field navigation.
6. Printed the map, packed it in a ziplock, ran the day-before check from our packing guide.

Total planning time: about 90 minutes, mostly spent picking the campground. The routing itself took 15.

FAQ

How do I find unpaved roads near me?

Komoot’s surface filter is the best general answer. Two more techniques: the Strava global heatmap (free) shows where cyclists actually ride, which surfaces dirt roads that don’t show up well on maps; and the Bikepacking.com route library has thousands of community-submitted routes in the US that you can filter by region.

Should I plan loops or out-and-backs?

For trip one, an out-and-back is easier. You’ll know the route on the way home, which removes one source of stress when you’re tired. Loops feel more satisfying but introduce the possibility of getting lost on unfamiliar roads at mile 20.

How early should I start route planning?

For a weekend S24O, we plan Tuesday or Wednesday for a Friday departure. That gives you time to book the campsite, draw and refine the route, and resolve anything weird (a closed road, a weather change). Day-of route planning never works as well.

What if the route has a section I’m nervous about?

Pre-ride it on a day trip, if you can. A 12-mile loop that covers the sketchy segment of your overnighter route, ridden unloaded the weekend before, removes most of the mystery. If pre-riding isn’t possible, build a clear bailout right before the sketchy section so you can abort if it’s worse than expected.

Does cell service matter that much?

For an S24O within 30 miles of home, yes — mostly so you can call a ride or text a partner if something goes wrong. Use a coverage map (your carrier’s website, or CellMapper) to check the route. Plan bailouts that are inside cell coverage even if the route itself has dead zones.

Komoot or Ride with GPS — just give me an answer.

Komoot. Buy the $9 home region. Use it. If you outgrow it after three trips, then look at RWGPS or Komoot Premium.

The takeaway: plan backwards from a booked campsite, use Komoot for the surface-aware routing, run the result through the four checks, and print a paper map. That’s the workflow.

If you haven’t done your first overnighter yet, our Bikepacking 101 guide covers the bike-and-gear side of trip one, and the S24O guide covers the trip format itself. Once your route is set, the bikepacking bag packing guide is the last step before you load up and roll out.

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