Experiments in Bike-Packing as a Hobbit (Part 1)

Many things in life seem to be designed with the assumption that the individual who will be using them will be the size of an average sized human, often an average sized man. As I am a quite short woman, (just under 5 foot tall or 150cm, otherwise known as ‘hobbit sized’), this can make things a little challenging at times.

A good example is bike packing. I have wanted to get into bike-packing, gravel bike riding, and bike touring (whatever you want to call cycle camping adventures) for quite a while, but finding a suitable gravel bike that is appropriate for my height was quite difficult, and now that I have at last found one, the next challenge is how to fit enough gear onto this tiny bike frame to allow me to set off on fun multi day cycling and camping adventures without having to rely on my partner or other companions to carry some of my gear load on their comparably larger bikes!

In my online search for gravel bikes designed for short adult humans, and associated bike packing gear and tips, it was surprising how little information was tailored for people of my size, not to mention very few physical bikes to choose from… so I thought it might be worth sharing my experiences and how I am setting my bike up in case it is helpful for other short stature people. In this first post about my experiments in bike-packing as a hobbit, I’ll share a little about what I found out in my search for a mini gravel bike, and what bike I ended up with. In future posts I’ll explore more of my trials and errors of attempting to carry enough gear on various adventures with my bike.

Gravel bike options for short adults.

Unlike when I bought my trusty hard-tail mountain bike – second hand from a 12 year old who was selling it to upgrade to a dual suspension bike – there are very few (or in my experience I did not even find a single one) gravel bikes available second hand that would be suitable for someone my height across Melbourne. I was looking for over a year. Even when searching for new gravel bikes, the options for someone my height is very limited. Sure, quite a few brands now offer “Small” or even “Extra Small (XS)” women’s gravel bikes, but almost none offer “Extra Extra Small (XXS)”, and even some of these XS or XXS bikes when you look up the stand-over height and other geometry measurements of the frame, they end up being too large for someone who is 150cm or less. The first XXS gravel bike I thought would be suitable and at the cheaper end of new gravel bikes price-wise (2022 Marin Nicasio Steel Gravel Urban Bike XXS supposedly designed for rider height of 146-152cm), I ordered online but when it arrived it was still too large for me (stand-over height of 697mm), and also didn’t have the hydraulic brakes I had assumed were included when the specs mentioned ‘disc brakes’, so I sold it without having ridden it for more than 1-2km as it was clearly not going to meet my needs.

After that failed purchase, I continued looking into which brands of bikes had models designed for short people, and I came across this article that I found very useful as it includes a list of XS gravel and touring bikes and their stand-over heights. From the details listed you can see that there is a big variation in what different brands consider “XS” and all of them had stand-over heights that were mostly still too high for me to comfortably stand over, probably more suitable for someone 160cm+. Never-the-less, it was a good starting point and after measuring my stand-over height and referring to the XS gravel bike list I could try to find nearby shops that might stock some of the smaller models and go to check them out in person to try them for size.

My XXS Gravel Bike.

In the end, after lots of searching, I finally found an XXS gravel bike that was designed for someone my height – a Salsa Journeyer (Apex 1 650B 51cm). After so long searching and coming to the realisation that there just are not many XXS gravel bikes that will fit me new, let alone second hand, I decided to buy the bike new from Commuter Cycles. It was a significant investment for me (although probably still at the cheaper end of new gravel bikes), and if I had found any second hand gravel bike that was suitable for my height I would have gone down the pre-loved route for sure. It kind of feels like a tax on being short sometimes…and it annoys me because I am sure there are plenty of other short humans who would love to go on bike camping adventures and can’t find a suitable bike or if they finally find one are not in the position to save up or buy one new.

That said, I love my Salsa Journeyer! It fits me perfectly, much better than any bike I have ever ridden. I got the Salsa Journeyer Apex 1 650B in the 51cm model, designed for riders with a height of 150-160cm, and a very low stand-over height of 641mm. I’d like to note, in case anyone reading this is shorter than me…that they do even make one size smaller, 49cm designed for riders 142-152cm and stand-over height of 606mm. You can look up the specs of the various Salsa Journeyer frame sizes on the Salsa website.

Not affiliated in anyway, but I also wanted to say I was very happy with the service I received from Commuter Cycles, so if you are in Melbourne and looking to get set up with a good bike then I recommend checking them out. They also made several modifications to the bike to further optimise it for what I wanted it to have. The changes included: upgrading to a Surly Moloko bar (a kind of flat bar with extra hand positions), hydro brakes, and installing some Tumbleweed mini pannier racks on the rear.

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