For snow the Continental Town and Country Tire got good review.

I prefer a steel touring frame with wider (37mm) tires, equipped with front and rear panniers and at least three water bottle cages. I can ride a bike like this carrying about 50 pounds of gear anywhere between 50 and 100 miles on pleasure tours. Properly motivated, I could certainly do more. Being kind of elderly, I have come to appreciate low gearing.

This kind of bike will give a stable ride and will be able to venture onto dirt roads and even very easy single track.

Besides, keeping the bike and body ready for bug out (or in) use is a lot of fun!

While this kind of bike is what I would consider optimum, almost any bike you are comfortable with will serve quite well.

Huh, sure has an enthusiastic customer review.

Thanks.

Ours are hybrid, Giant Cypress DX



Put a handlebar bag on the handlebars and on he back of the seat.


Second bottle carrier on back


My dash is more high tech than a lot of cars.


In the handlebar bags I carry some food such as breakfast bars and such small first aid kit, a small toolkit with tire patches, pump, etc, paper maps, spare batteries (AA) for the camera and gps, diapers and wipes and pull ups.

I wouldn't mind a dedicated Tourer or Audax Frame myself in high quality low alloy steel tubing but the prices for reasonable quality cycle framesets and parts are extortionate. I have just looked up an old mass produced classic called the Dawes Galaxy Ultra in 853 tubing and nearly fell off my chair. The frameset was £600 or $1000. We are talking a factory frame not bespoke.

http://www.dawescycles.com/p-32-ultra-galaxy-frameset.aspx

The titanium in 3AL/2.5V version was £2000 or $3,300

Even the parts such as gear train and brakes parts are eye watering expensive.

The Dawes Super Galaxy was £1500 or $2500 for middle of the road quality parts.

I think I might just get the old Nivacrom MTB frame from the loft and braze some addition bits on so it will take Panniers and mudguards then just get it resprayed.

If I was to build up a bike for serious long distance riding, I'd start with Surly's Long Haul Trucker frame and build up from there. The LHT comes as a complete bike too with the Slickasaurus tires mentioned previously and lots of attachment points.

You can special order through REI if my contact there is correct.

For snow, forget that other tire, check out the Endomorph. I'm in SOCAL, what do I know about riding in snow

Russ is right, the LHT is an outstanding touring bike for the price. If I didn't have a custom already, I would have one of those.

Greg

I've found a box in the loft, which I had long forgotten about and it contained a pair of Sachs New Success Cartridge Bearing Freehubs (front and rear in 32 hole drilling) and will take an (old fashioned?) 7 speed HG90 Hyperglide cassette 13-30. Any recommendation of which wheel rims to get as I have an old pair of Mavic 230 SBPs, but these rims only have single eyelets and would much prefer double eyelets with a black anodised or ceramic side wall suitable for touring loads. I can easily get DT DB SS Swiss spokes and lace up the wheels myself. I'm still a bit out of the loop when it comes to recommendations for cycle parts especially over the constantly changing groupset mentality the large manufacturers always seem to inflict on their customers.

Whats parts are recommended i.e. are Shimano, Campagnolo still the leaders in the field as I've noticed some other parts manufacturers such as SRAM and Face Race etc. All the current MTB dérailleur gear train kit all appears to be extremely ugly compared to 10-15 years ago for example and most appear to be either rather pointless 9 or 10 speed gearing systems requiring less reliable narrower chains.

Oh man they even to have something called an external bearing bottom bracket, i.e. a fix to a solution that didn't need a fix.

A few years ago I retooled my bike for touring and my local bike shop built a wonderful set of wheels using Sun CR18 rims, 700 size (I believe they are also available in 26" size as well). Mine were spoked 36 in front, and 40 in the rear, basically a tandem build. I didn't have to do anything to them for the last 30,000 miles, until a car hit the front wheel, requiring a modest realignment. I'd be a little cautious about using 32 spoke wheels.

Hm,m - Wasn't I the guy yelling and screaming about the virtues of light weight equipment in another post? I guess it just depends...

Dagny -- just back from REI. Not only can you order Surly bikes, but you can also order Surly frames. If you have the skills you can build up the bike with parts you like so it's exactly what you want or the techs at REI can build it for you. I took the REI comprehensive bike course so feel fairly comfortable saying I'd let them build it up. I'll probably get the complete LHT bike and then replace parts that don't work for me. (FWIW -- the tech I spoke with rides a Surly Cross Check)

Another bike I like for the all purpose bug-out bike you asked about is the Surly Karate Monkey. They had one in the REI bike shop in the build process. Rather than the single speed Surly sells this one had a 3 speed hub and 9 gear cassette. The KM looks like a really well built Cro-Moly MB frame (over-built?), with reinforcing at high stress points. The frame and fork are sized to accept (really) wide tires for snow. With the right tires for whatever conditions you face, the KM could do anything; however, what I said earlier about the LHT stands, it's a better long distance road bike. $.02