After decades of bikepacking and testing gear, Logan Watts lists 15 items, habits, and opinions he once endorsed but now omits. The piece introduces a new series focused on what experienced riders stop carrying and why.
Logan Watts draws on roughly 15 years of touring, bikepacking, and gear testing to revisit and discard prior preferences.
The Cut List is a new series examining gear, habits, and opinions that riders stop using after long experience.
The first installment examines 15 things Watts once advocated for but now considers unnecessary or replaced.
Logan Watts—founding editor with years of touring, bikepacking, and gear testing—frames The Cut List as a practical exercise in subtraction. Rather than adding another gear roundup, he asks what to stop carrying, what habits to drop, and which strongly held opinions haven't stood the test of miles and time.
The first Cut List contains 15 entries. Each entry covers an item, habit, or strongly held opinion that Watts once recommended, used for years, or defended enthusiastically. For each, he explains why it made sense initially and why experience ultimately led him to stop using it. The piece emphasizes practical lessons learned on the road rather than abstract prescriptions.
Watts' writing is conversational and self-reflective. He uses everyday anecdotes—like a childhood memory about changing tastes—to open the topic of evolving preferences. That storytelling is meant to make the revisions feel reasonable and relatable: equipment choices change as riders log miles and learn what truly matters to them.
This piece is useful for riders who already carry a substantial kit and want a realistic, experience-based second opinion. It's also relevant to gear obsessives who tend to accumulate solutions before testing them in sustained field use. The Cut List is not a how-to for beginners but a resource for people refining their setups and looking to lighten weight, simplify systems, or drop assumptions.
Treat the volume as a prompt for an honest shakedown of your own kit. Watts' intent is to provoke reconsideration: identify items you defended and test whether those items still earn their space on your bike. Expect pragmatic reasoning more than absolute rules.
The Cut List (Vol. 1) is a reflective inventory of 15 things a longtime bikepacker no longer carries or recommends. It's framed as practical advice steeped in miles and repeated testing—not as a checklist to adopt without thinking. The value is in the reasoning behind each cut, and in prompting riders to reassess their own gear and habits.
Am I a gearhead? I do research gear quite a bit. But I don’t own a ton of different gear. I certainly don’t have the opportunity to test the latest and greatest shiny things. I mostly research gear so I can have a good knowledge base and strike while the iron is hot when I require an upgrade. Meaning, I like to find li
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Our fall Garage Sale is on! Our editors are digging into their gear stashes and offering up tons of items at deeply discounted prices. Plus, Bikepacking Collective members who list an item in the Bike Camp Co-op during the two-day event will be entered to win a $100 Velo Orange gift card. Find details below… The post O
The fall BIKEPACKING.com Garage Sale returns next week! Bikepacking Collective members who list an item in the Bike Camp Co-op during the two-day event will be entered to win some shiny new components from Velo Orange. Plus, our editors are digging into their gear stashes and offering up tons of items at deeply discoun
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