Even for non-bikepacking types, the name that usually springs to mind when it comes to on-the-bike gear carrying options is Revelate Designs. The Alaskan company has been producing an array of frame bags and their bag brethren for ten years, borne out of crazy races like the Iditarod and other adventures in the frozen wilderness of the north. Most bikepackers own or will have owned a Revelate bag of some kind at some point.

Locally the brand was distributed by the now-defunct company Cycletech, and when their employees were looking for a new gig and their stable of brands a new home, Kapiti-based Bryce Lorcet jumped at the chance to keep working with Revelate and now his new venture Cyclewerks holds the NZ distribution. Bryce knows the product well and was super helpful in selecting a set-up for Kristine’s gravel bike for weekend and overnight trips, with an eye to adding on later for longer adventures.

The staple of any good packing set-up is the frame bag, and not wanting to go the full-size route we chose a Tangle half-frame bag. The Tangle comes in three standard sizes and for the 55cm frame a small fitted the bill nicely.

Wide and thick Velcro straps secure the bag to the frame at four points, while a couple of straps with cam-lock buckles securing the front of the unit to the head and down tubes. Zippers are chunky nylon units and stretchy Cordura around them seal against the elements and prevents stress on the zip.

The outer shell is VX21 material, which is light and hopefully strong. The liner is a ripstop material and there are straps to secure a mini-pump along the top of the interior, and there’s a hole for running a hydration pack hose or other wiring for whatever the hell you’d need wires in a frame bag for; phone or music player probably. There are extra liner compartments on the left side, handy for sliding in some tools, cards, money or extra gels/bars.

Now that’s a saddle bag! The Pika is the smaller version of Revelate’s Viscacha seat bag, which once again was suggested by Bryce as a good fit for a smaller frame and a shorter trip set-up. It provides from 6 to 12 litres of cargo capacity, depending on how much you can compress stuff and how much you want to roll up the closure. So far we’ve managed to jam in a pair of shoes, riding jacket, a couple of tops/shirts, pants and various other small bits of clothing and important stuff like chocolate.

There’s plenty of straps and buckles to get it all cinched down snug and prevent bouncing or swinging around. Heaps of anchor points and some small loops for bungeeing on jackets etc.

For all the stuff you need to get to regularly or in a hurry, or even for short rides/day trips the top-tube mounted Gas Tank is a gem.

It’s pretty impressive just how much stuff this thing holds, which frees up a lot of space in the frame and seat bags too. Big zipper loops make it easy to access the contents while riding.

We’ve been impressed so far with the carrying capacity of the Revelate set-up, using different combos for a variety of rides and trips. There are some bigger missions in the future for the bags, and we are eager to find out how they hold up over the winter months and how much we can manage to carry with them. We’re by no means experts in this field, so it’ll be interesting to see how easy they make life for us in our fledgling bikepacking adventures. Look out for a full review in the next few months.