For the past few years, every January, some friends and I have embarked on what we like to call the January Sendathon. This “sendathon” serves as an excuse to beat the early winter blues and embark on trips every weekend of the month. In late December of 2024, with the sendathon on the horizon, I was beginning to get stressed about the possibility of not being able to complete all 4 weekends of the extravaganza due to some family business the first weekend of the month. This would not stand.

After leaving southern California in the mid-morning on Saturday the 4th, I quickly called up Chad to see if he would be interested in a quick bikepacking overnighter to set the month on the right track. Of course he agreed, and when I arrived in San Luis Obispo in the midafternoon, we both packed up in around 30 minutes, and hit the road towards eastern San Luis Obispo County.

After parking my truck at a now deserted saloon, we set off on a leisurely 20-mile ride to camp. The ride was swift, as we knew sunset would be coming soon. We made it to camp with only a few minutes to spare and immediately got to work setting up camp and cooking my signature camp burrito. We built ourselves a lovely fire, and enjoyed our food as the temps began to drop. After a few hours of keeping the small fire going, we realized almost all of our bike bags had frozen over, and luckily, we had kept our sleeping bags packed away. We hit the hay, and had quite a chilly night’s rest, with lows reaching the low 20s. This was the first proper trip with my cold weather quilt I made during the fall of 2024, and it held up beautifully, even with a healthy bit of ice on the footbox in the morning.

The morning and ride back the next morning were relatively uneventful, with a small fire and some recovered bananas I had dropped the day before being the only things of note. Bikepacking overnighters like this are one of my favorite ways to get out for a quick camp, and we both felt very lucky to do this in the middle of Winter in relative comfort. This trip was also Chad’s first trip on his Rockhopper ATB I had built him, and it handled the trip wonderfully. A full breakdown of his build can be found in my Beginners Bikepacking Guide here.

Short video of the trip →