The Radavist

Revelate Designs’ Newest Dyneema Infused Lineup
Words and photography by Spencer Harding with additional words by Lael Wilcox 

When I heard that Revelate Designs was planning to release some new bags featuring fancy Dyneema fabrics, I was drooling. For those in the back that remember that pedestrian activity called backpacking, which was my background before bikepacking, you will remember salivating over gram-saving Cuben Fiber everything! I hope our new Dyneema overlords can forgive the reference to the previous name of the fabric, I just get a little sentimental. If you are curious about the name change, you can check this article or fall down a rabbit hole of the many applications of Dyneema fibers here. The most important takeaway is this: Dyneema is the world’s strongest fiber with superior strength to weight ratio, and for a set of bags designed for the express purpose of achieving a FKT (fastest known time) on endurance mountain bike routes, every ounce counts.

We’ve had a busy year at the Radavist and it wasn’t until I combed through each month individually that I could finally realize all the hard work everyone put in over here for the past twelve months. While much of the site is focused on gear in the form of products and bike portraits, my favorite pieces are always photojournals from rides, tours, and trips. There’s something wonderful about peering through the lens of a cyclist and hitching a ride along with them while they pedal along their route.

Compiled in this gallery is a photographic sample from 12 months of content, in somewhat chronological order. It’s trippy to flip through the gallery and see all the unique perspectives. In many cases, a photo is worth a thousand words!

There’s also a list below of the top posts from the site this year, running the gamut from riding in the desert to the WTF Bikexplorers Summit, exploring Crete, mixing snakes and divas in Puerto Rico and much more. They’re in chronological order, so if you haven’t read these articles, you really should!

Wendy’s Silk Road Mountain Race Bike is Now a Badass Commuter
Photos and words by Morgan Taylor

Conversations began early this year around what eventually became the Kona Rove LTD you see here. For the past five or so years, our friend Wendy – an accomplished ultra runner in a former life – has applied her endurance racing experience to big solo bike rides. In that time she’s explored southern British Columbia, completed the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, ridden through much of the south-east US, and raced her first ultra bikepacking event, the 2017 Transcontinental.

This year Wendy set her sights on the inaugural Silk Road Mountain Race in Kyrgyzstan, and we began to talk about what kind of a bike she might want to ride. She wanted drop bars, she wanted discs, she wanted steel, and she wanted bigger tires than the traditional road bikes she’d ridden in the past. These conversations led to a bike based around wide 650b tires and Wendy got scheming on a build.