About BikeHikeSafari and Brad (Shepherd) McCartney

BikeHikeSafari is a world class hiking and bike touring blog. There are expert gear reviews on all things to do with Hiking, Backpacking, Thru Hiking, Bike Touring and Bikepacking. There are hiking trail guides and information on bike touring destinations from someone who actually visited those places.

This website was started by Brad (Shepherd) McCartney who is an experienced long distance hiker and bike tourer. His extensive knowledge of the hiking and bike touring was gained by a lifetime spend on hiking trails on every continent except Antarctica and completing the Hiking Triple Crown. He completed thru hikes on the Pacific Crest Trail, Continental Divide Trail and Appalachian Trail. He also hiked the whole length of New Zealand on the Te Araroa.

He used that knowledge to assist others in planning their thru hikes with training presentations, exhaustive information guides and expert gear reviews of ultralight hiking and backpacking gear. These reviews will give hikers the ability to safely and confidently go on any hiking trail anywhere in the world. He has hiked almost 10000 miles / 16000 km in the last couple of years on thru hiking trails.

He also loves bike touring and bikepacking and has cycled more than 20000 miles / 32000 km through Europe, Australia, North America and South America. One day he hopes to cycle the whole length of the Americas from Alaska to the southern top of Argentina. So far he has cycled from Alaska to Ecuador, about two thirds of the way. He uses his knowledge of Bike Touring and Bikepacking to produce expert bike touring gear reviews and destination guides.

His knowledge of outdoor gear and the tips and tricks he provides on this website increased even further when he used to manage a large multinational outdoor company. He learned about all the best outdoor gear in the world. Prior to managing the Outdoor Store he was a Wilderness Guide and Police Officer who was trained in Search and Rescue and spend a lot of his time working in remote areas of Northern Australia.

He transferred his extensive knowledge of hiking and bike touring into reviews of all the best outdoor gear in the world for this website, BikeHikeSafari. Now he spends all his time testing and writing about all the best hiking and bike touring gear on the planet. BikeHikeSafari is a combination of hiking gear reviews, gear lists, info on hiking trails and bicycle touring destination guides.

BikeHikeSafari is a small independent website owned and operated by Brad McCartney. It is not part of a large web network like many other big outdoor review websites.

All the reviews on this site are the views of the author and the gear reviews come from personal knowledge and testing of the gear. This website never takes money for reviews and never does sponsored posts.

Here are some of the Best Guides and Gear Reviews that you need to look at:

Interesting facts about Brad:

His first two overnight hiking trips ended in disaster. The first trip ended when his blisters were so bad he had to end the 3 day trip on the first day. His hiking partner had to hitch hike off the trail to get help. His second trip ended in exhaustion when he discovered that carrying tinned food was a bad idea.
Brad has climbed a couple of high altitude mountains including Kilimanjaro in Africa and 19974 feet / 6088 meter Huayna Potosi in Bolivia in 1996.
The longest he has ever hiked without resupply was in 1997 when he hiked the Huayhuash Circuit in Peru (before it was popular). He carried a 61 lb / 28 kg backpack with 13 days food.
The longest he has hiked without resupply was 180 miles / 290 km through the Bob Marshal Wilderness in Montana, 200 miles without resupplying with food. He did that solo.
Brad has hiked on every continent, except Antartica.
Brad has helped hundreds of thru hikers plan their hiking trips over the years, and also presented training sessions on thru hiking.
Brad once cycled under the midnight sun in Alaska and later cycled 100 miles / 161 km on a fully loaded touring bike.
He estimates that he has spent about 2500 nights sleeping in a tent or under the stars!
He has been writing a book about the Pacific Crest Trail and has about 100000 words completed. This has taken him 4 years to get this far. He expects to finish writing the book sometime soon, but spends way too much time reviewing gear for this website.
He had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome when he was a Police Officer. At times he was so tired he couldn’t get out of bed. He once tried to walk around the block (normally 10 minutes) and it took almost an hour. He spend the next 3 days in bed exhausted. He credits Chronic Fatigue as being the life changing moment that led him to challenge himself to complete long distance hikes and bike touring.
He would love to meet is David Attenborough.
He is a morning person who loves coffee.
BikeHikeSafari started as a website in 2013.

In 2022 Brad moved from Sydney, Australia to the rural wine region of Chile where he is building a house that backs onto mountains with plenty of places to go hiking and mountain biking.

Please enjoy everything that is, BikeHikeSafari.

Regards,

Brad (Shepherd) McCartney