Apidura’s new collaboration with Canyon has produced a Grizzly bikepacking bag crossover, refining the best of the Apdura Racing Series to make it more off-road-ready. Developed to equip the new Canyon Grizl gravel bike, the light & compact Grizzly bikepacking bags aren’t actually new shapes, sizes, or even Canyon-specific, instead, they combine the best features of Apidura’s Racing & Backcountry families for lightweight adventure touring.
Apidura x Canyon Grizzly off-road adventure bikepacking bags
The new Apidura x Canyon Grizl-ly bags are meant to be a complete, lightweight bikepacking setup, but not necessarily to outfit you for multi-day adventures. Instead, these are the type of bags to load up for your summer #Sub24hourOvernighter, a weekend of credit card touring, or for a fast off-road adventure race where you don’t really need to pack shelter. As such they take a lot of inspiration from Apidura’s already popular and trans-continental proven Racing Series.
In fact, the Apidura x Canyon Grizzly bags are straight out of the Racing lineup for their size, shape, and main matte black waterproof Hexalon fabric. (Btw, I’m gonna keep calling them Grizzly bags no matter what anyone tells me. Apidura worked with Canyon to refine the bags for their all-new Grizl gravel bike, but there’s no reason that only Grizl owners should benefit from these great Grizzly tweaks.)
What’s new? Off-road bikepacking – Tech details
Starting with a Racing Series silhouette & core construction, each pack adopts features from Apidura’s Backcountry Series, “reflecting the style of riding the Grizl has been designed for“. That means lightweight & compact, but also extra durable through the mud & over technical trails.
The 3 main differences between the Grizzly packs and their Racing equivalents are: extra abrasion-resistant panels, internal tie-downs/pockets to secure your gear, and mud-resistant zippers.
Those features already exist in the MTB-focused Backcountry Series, but come to the gravel bike now, too.
The big difference in the saddle pack is just the hard-wearing 420D nylon reinforcement where the rear of the saddle rails rub against the bag, and then another big reinforced panel underneath where it gets plastered with mud on every off-road ride.
The frame packs are missing the additional flap that the Racing packs use to keep rain & debris out, instead opting for a more mud-resistant waterproof zip proven on the Backcountry bags. This will be welcome to bikepackers who get annoyed with the Racing packs’ flaps flaring out & rubbing their knees when the bags is overly stuffed full. Inside the Grizzly bags, a new lashing point allows you to strap items like a pump or tool kit securely.
The direct-mount bolt-on toptube pack keeps the easy-to-use magnetic flap closure, but ditches the front tab & strap that would otherwise attach the bag to your steerer tube. Apidura says that most bolt-on packs don’t usually need the additional strap, with the plastic structure inside offering plenty of stiffness.
Since it is designed to fit the bolt placement on the Grizl, this version has only one pair of holes, and uses a set of tool-free thumb screws to secure it to the bike, paired with a slightly thicker internal foam base that ends up making the pack sit closer/tighter to the toptube.
Beyond simply printing their name on the side of each pack, in a reference to adventure exploring, each bag also gets the GPS coordinates of Canyon’s Koblenz HQ laser-etched onto it.
Apidura x Canyon Grizzly bags – Pricings, options & availability
The Apidura x Canyon collaboration bag series includes four Grizzly bags, each priced about 20% more expensive than its Race Series analog.
The £149 / $204 / 170€ saddle pack comes in one compact 5L size rolling down small to tuck in under your saddle. The frame pack is available in two sizes – the £105 / $144 / 120€ small frame pack with 2.4L capacity to fit 2XS-L Grizls and the £114 / $156 / 130€ medium pack with 4.5L capacity to fit bigger bikes like the XL & 2XL Grizl. Lastly, the 1L Bolt-On Top Tube Pack sells for £57 / $78 / 65€.
All of the new Apidura x Canyon Grizzly bags are available directly from either Apidura or Canyon.
