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Emily Bei Cheng and a group of friends spend the Christmas holiday bike touring in México. With a planned route from México City to Oaxaca, Emily reflects on why bike touring feels like a more genuine way to engage with the people and places they encounter along the way.
Looking for a touring route in South America? Ryan Wilson‘s your guy. How about Central Asia? Yep, he’s been there too. If you’re stewing on a trip, or just looking for a little visual inspiration, check out this greatest hits round up from Ryan’s travels featuring his eight favorite bike touring routes around the world.
We were chilling in a hostel in Kathmandu, enjoying warm showers and the internet when I realized this Coronavirus situation was getting serious. In a few days, Ryan Wilson and I had packed up, booked tickets to wherever we considered home at the time (aka with the parents, as we were both on an open-ended bike trip), said goodbye, and flew out. It turned out to be a wise decision, as in the next weeks the world would go into hibernation.
And so I found myself swapping the tent for my childhood bedroom. In lockdown. My surroundings had never felt so tight. Mapping out routes was still not boring though. And since I found myself living in Greece again after almost ten years away it became evident that this was the perfect time to plan a multi-day bikepacking tour through the Greek mountains: The Pindus Traverse.
Fresh pulls of espresso waltz through a cold September morning, dancing alongside a particular brand of nervous excitement. It’s a certain hum I’ve come to understand as unique to the start of bikepacking trips and the suckers who choose such endeavors as their vacation. Strangers who will become good friends in a few short miles clear the frogs from their throats to answer early morning queries about their hometowns, bike set-ups, and handlebar tchotchkes over hot breakfast burritos and steamy lattes slung by Autobahn Coffee as we all wait for the start of the Salsa Cycles Ochoco Overlander.
The Huracan 300 ain’t no trip to Disney World. Born from over 15 years of local land protection advocacy and route development, this 370+ mile bikepacking event showcases the finest, and sometimes forgotten, backcountry of central Florida. After making the voyage to the start line four times, Andy Karr writes about the routes’ rugged appeal and how it came to be.
If you’ve ever been on a bike tour, you know that sometimes the most challenging part isn’t necessarily the actual riding. Emma Jones finds answers for overcoming obstacles of bikepacking in Robert M. Pirsig’s classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, while taking on a two month trans-Europe tour. Beware of the Gumption Traps!
As a salute of solidarity to everyone who keeps getting out on the bike through winter, Hailey Moore shares three tales of off-season travails from riding through this most testing season.
When the opportunity to farm sit a friend’s land is presented, Carmen Aiken’s response was a quick affirmative, but the getting there would take a little longer. On a loaded up Omnium Cargo Bike, Carmen enjoys the scenic route through the Driftless while sharing local encounters and reflections from the road.
Belén Castelló and Tristan Bogaard have made a life bikepacking around the world. On a trip to Italy last fall Belén’s brother, Horacio, decided to join the couple on a tour through the Dolomites. On the cusp of turning 40 and with little-to-no cycling experience, Horacio was looking for an experience that would shake him up, and wake him up from his normal routine. He found that while riding an e-bike for back-to-back days in the Dolomite Mountains. Read on for Belén’s recounting of the trip and why choosing e-bikes felt like the best choice for their ride.
Not everything goes how you imagine it will when you set out on a trip across the world. In my experience, the majority of the time it doesn’t. It was around three years ago, in February 2020, I was packing up some things in Kathmandu to hit the pause button on endlessly riding and head home for a couple of months to visit family after a long series of tours through southern Patagonia and Asia. I’d booked a round trip flight and left my trusty Tumbleweed Prospector behind in Nepal, with my plans set to return to the Himalayas in April of 2020 to make a route through India and the rugged peaks of Pakistan… But, as we all know, plans changed.
A couple of years later, as Nepal began loosening up its restrictions on tourism, I started eyeing my return to the Himalayas, to finally retrieve my bike and follow through with the riding plans I’d set into motion years before…
Tyler and Spencer stitched together a multisport overnight in the enigmatic Cochise Stronghold in Southern Arizona. The duo combined some of the best single and double-track riding, along with a squeeze through the popular Inner Passage, making one epic lap around this beautiful mountain range. Be careful if you’re claustrophobic because this gallery is tight!
We were one day into a three-day trip dubbed the Garibaldi Classic or “The Nch’kay House of Pleasure and Pain.” Pandemics aside, on the long weekend in September, it has become a tradition to embark on some sort of ill-advised multi-day trip involving mountain landscapes, good friends, small backpacks, and quite a bit more foot travel than would be advertised in a long-weekend bike trip brochure. The goal was to leave from our front doors, bikes loaded with everything we would need for a three-day, lightweight excursion in the mountains, curling a horseshoe around Garibaldi Lake within British Columbia’s Garibaldi Provincial Park.
The peaks of Wyoming’s Gros Ventre Range might not be quite as photogenic as the towering, craggy summits of the nearby Tetons, but snaking through the Gros Ventres just west of the Continental Divide is something the Tetons lack – a substantial network of mostly-groomed winter trails. I didn’t know much about the trails, but looking at topo maps of the area, it looked impressively rugged terrain, much more so than other places where I’ve done longer rides on a fat bike. Last January, I was in the nearby Teton Valley, and looking for a change of scenery and trails, Kait Boyle and I decided to venture over to the Gros Ventres for a few days to see just what the winter riding was like.
Radical Atavism is about sharing stories from the road, knocking the dust off your bike, and reflecting on an experience. These thoughtful reflections, penned by autodidactic raconteurs, are just one of the feathers we’ll proudly peacock in our caps. Looking back at the past twelve months, we’ve got a list of ten articles that stood out from the rest. Included are stories from the birthplace of mountain biking in the US, of FKTs, CKTs, events, and more. Don’t miss out on this nostalgic trip through The Radavist’s Top Ten Stories of 2022!
Created by Ernesto Pastor, the Montañas Vacias offers interested bike tourists route options ranging from 100 miles to 430 miles through the Spanish Lapland. Photographer Carlos Blanchard Nerin recently made a second voyage to the country’s southeastern region, remote in nature and characterized by countless miles of forest roads on a high plateau. In the photo essay below, he reflects on connecting to a place you thought you knew more deeply and sharing moments of beauty on the bike with friends.
Ruta del Jefe is a weekend of adventure cycling, education, community, and advocacy that has taken place in the Sky Islands region of southern Arizona, which we’ve previously reported on here, here, and here. Beginning in 2024, the event will occur in Cuenca los Ojos, a protected landscape in Sonora, Mexico’s Sky Islands. Below, this two-part collaborative story (“The Watershed of the Springs” by Sarah Swallow and “La Aventura” by Daniel Zaid) details what’s next for Ruta del Jefe along with other recreational and educational opportunities in these borderlands.
Brette Hite is half of the American pop duo, FRENSHIP, and when he’s not making music there’s a good chance you’ll find him on a bike. The short film series, “The Distance I’ve Travelled,” shares artfully captured moments of introspection from Brett, over the course of a year, as he navigates the difficulties of the pandemic, the death of a friend, and a devastating break-up. Throughout it all, he finds solace through riding where the simple act of turning the pedals reminds him that, despite all, you can keep moving forward.
With a visa running out and heavy rains setting in, Ryan Wilson makes the most of his remaining time roaming the Colombian countryside. Following unknown lines on the map through the country’s north-central Andean artery, Ryan’s reportage and photos give a true sense of Colombian biketouring.
