For our San Juan hut-to-hut trip, the question still remained whether we should bring a trailer or just use panniers. Since Brian has both, we decided it would be a good idea to try each of them out to better decide.

Brian and Judy did a short backpacking trip starting on Tuesday and I drove up on Friday and met up with them in Downieville. Since Brian and Judy’s backpacking trip was shortened because of a relentless attack by mosquitoes, they had already scoped out a nice campsite by Yuba Pass. It was nice indeed – relatively secluded with not many people.

Unfortunately, the lack of people didn’t mean a lack of mosquitoes. We all decided to sleep in our cars that night. Since it wasn’t very cold, Judy and I decided to crack the windows a bit, hoping it would be enough to provide adequate ventilation but not enough for the mosquitoes to get in. Well, that didn’t work very well as a good number of mosquitoes got in and were able to feast on us.

We awoke to a beautiful morning the next day. Since we wanted to get a good feel for what we would be using on our Colorado trip, we loaded up the trailer with the gear we planned to bring on the trip. To start, I carried all our joint gear in the trailer and Judy carried the rack and empty panniers.

Not long after setting out on the trail that Brian had mapped out, we got lost. The trail went from being relatively easy fire road to a trail with much bumpier and steeper sections. Fortunately, it wasn’t long before we were able to backtrack and find the right trail.

Partway through the day, we mounted the empty trailer onto Judy’s bike and the rack and loaded panniers onto my bike. Later on, I again switched back to the fully loaded trailer. I was able to get a really good apples-to-apples, side-by-side comparison of the two.

Basically, there are pros and cons to both.

Trailer:

• Definitely more work, which makes sense because the trailer itself is heavier than the panniers and may (?) have more rolling resistance.
• Better control – you can pretty much haul ass without any issues.

Panniers:

• Less work.
• Less control. Bike feels a bit more squirrely. Going around corners, it feels that your front wheel can slip out a bit easier which makes sense since your back wheel is so weighted.
• Easier to get hurt while taking pictures. I got a nice bruise to show for this. I had whipped out my camera to take a pic as I normally would, the bike tried to tip over, and I got a nice abrasion on my leg trying to stop it.

IMO, the differences are really not that great. The reason I think the trailer has a slight edge, however, is that overall, the effort should be less than with panniers. Consider 1 trailer for 3 people v. 3 panniers for 3 people. The trailer will have an overall lesser weight. And with the pannier, you are lugging it all day while with the trailer, you theoretically should only be lugging it for 1/3 day.

After eating dinner at one of the three restaurants in Sierra City, we got ready for bed. Brian had earlier decided to set up a tent rather than sleep in his car. Judy and I opted for the lazy route and decided to sleep in the car again, but this time without opening the windows. It ended up not being too bad.

We awoke to another beautiful morning. We decided to forego the trailer and panniers for today and instead try to get lots of miles in. It was another fun day, although a bit hot at times. When it was all said and done, we ended up riding about 36 miles, a new record for both Judy and myself! Although kind of tired, we didn’t feel too bad. Considering that these two days were at elevation, we starting to think that we’ll be fairly well prepared for our trip.

I unfortunately broke the LCD on my camera so had to revert back to my old Canon S200 which doesn’t take as good pictures. Here are the pics from this trip.

Posted by Roger at 8:58 PM.