Eulogy for The Revelate Viscacha

Revelate Designs’ Viscacha might come to mind as the original bikepacking seat bag. Back in 2015, I asked Revelate’s founder Eric Parsons whether that was true, to which he answered, “Who was first to make bikepacking seat bags? Jeff Boatman. He started in 2006… and I started in 2007. I was doing my own thing in Alaska, influenced by the needs of winter bikepacking races and got pulled into modern bikepacking later due to the rise of the Colorado Trail Race and the Tour Divide. The first bag I made was called the ‘Super Twinkie’ in 2007, it was bigger than the Viscacha but lacked any structure. A lot of people used them in winter fat bike races here and the Arrowhead. The Viscacha came about in 2009 and the core design has been unchanged since then, aside from tweaks.”

Either way, the Viscacha was a great bag used buy riders all over the world. But seat bags have progressed quite a bit since 2009. Designs changed in size to meet riders’ needs, and now there are a handful of unique systems, including Revelate’s own Terrapin system. Today, the original Viscacha and its smaller cousin, the Pika, have left the sewing room floor. They are survived by the Terrapin and Vole, and preceded in rest by the Super Twinkie. See Revelate’s full “Eulogy to the best damned seat bag we could have designed in 2010” over on their website with photos by Nicholas Carman, Joey Schusler, and Matt Hage.

“Raise your beer and cheers one last time to the friendly rodents that helped define bikepacking and made so many memories possible.”

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