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For the final installment of our coverage documenting the Forgotten Coast Route – a bikerafting trip connecting all of Iceland’s southern coast – expedition photographer Ryan Hill writes a series of short stories recounting some memorable moments from the media team’s point of view. Follow along with Ryan and the rest of the team which includes videographers Bryan “Bobcat” Davis, Jeremy Bishop, and Icelander Sigurdur “Sigi’ Petur.
As you might imagine, we’re bag and camera nerds over here at The Radavist. A lot has changed with cycling and photography since the days of pedaling around with a 35mm SLR jammed into an Ortlieb handlebar bag on tours and overnighters. The name of the game is simplicity nowadays, relying on handlebar straps rather than proprietary attachment methods.
There have been several wonderful handlebar-mounted camera bags that have come to market over the past few years, and the latest comes from Cedaero. The Two Harbors, Minnesota-based bag makers announced their new Viewfinder Camera Pack recently and John got his hands on a production model a few weeks before the launch. He’s spent some time with it and is ready to give you an Initial Reaction breakdown review below so read on…
For eight years running, around the Summer Solstice, Swift Industries has put out a rallying cry for cyclo-touring enthusiasts the world over to strap some bags to their bikes, head out for a couple of days of pedaling, and sleep on the ground. For this year’s Campout, we partnered with Swift to host the Radavist Swift Campout Photo Shootout, which called on campers to document their SCO experience through photography for a chance to win a load of prizes. The esteemed jury made up of representatives from The Radavist, and Swift Industries judged over 100 entries on their merits, including but not limited to technical considerations, composition, lighting, and impact, as well as the raw emotional power of the images (aka STOKE FACTOR!). We’re pleased to announce that Rifqi Akbar has been selected as this year’s winner and, below, he shares about the campout he and his friends embarked on near Bandung, Indonesia! Congrats, Rifqi!
The social justice movements that took place during the past couple of years yielded a variety of changes within the cycling industry. While we could talk ad nauseam bout how impactful, beneficial, or sustaining those have been, I still see people from all sides of the cycling world fighting to be heard and recognized for their achievements. Still, the creative side of this industry feels quiet. I think it is time to expand on the list of names we see frequently out there visually documenting the various aspects of the sport. Over the course of the last three years, I have been building a database of WTF-NB (Women/Trans/Femme – Non-Binary) photographers and videographers that have been professionally working or emerging into the cycling industry. This list hosts WTF-NB from all over the world, each with a beautiful new set of eyes entering the sport we love. With this list, I hope to see these individuals receive the exposure they deserve because we can always use more beautiful pieces of work that capture the spirit of cycling.
It is my hope to keep this list ever-growing, utilize it as a resource for brands or others looking for diverse documentarians, and, on a quarterly basis, add additional names that come to light. Below, I have gathered a handful of biographies and work examples from some of the creatives that have already expressed interest in participating in this project and outline the steps to collaborate with me. I greatly appreciate the Radavist hosting this project introduction and my goal is to continue sharing more profiles and work examples from the collection of creatives.
In our previous story, we showed you Atom Cycles’ workshop in Ojo de Agua, in the State of México, but here we’ll take a look at two of their finished bicycles. What better example to look at in-depth than the personal bikes of Dulce and Wladimir, the couple behind the name.
Classic road geometry has always had a nice visual appeal to me. The straight lines and minimalistic look are sleek and pure. When MASH launched their steel All Road frameset, I just had to try one.
It’s been over a decade since I’d been to Emporia to help establish Unbound Gravel’s Crew For Hire program. The world is a great deal different now. Having spoken at length with Kristi Mohn about things like generational change I was curious to see what, if any, of those changes had taken place in not just Emporia but also in the Unbound Gravel event itself. There was also the tragic passing of Moriah Wilson, the induction of the first class of the Gravel Hall of Fame, and a variety of other things going on that really made this year’s Unbound Gravel more significant than most.
Every day that I spent in Emporia had its own moments that showed me something new and unexpected. There were signs of the massive changes the cycling community, industry, and Emporia itself are going through. I witnessed grief, loss, love, and more. Throughout everything, there was one common theme: People who were doing the best they could.
The weather was the hot goss around Emporia during the week of UNBOUND Gravel 2022. “Will it rain?” “How hot will it be?” “What tires are you running?” “Oh look, the forecast changed!”
This year’s edition of Grinduro California had been delayed twice. Once in 2020 because of increasing COVID infection rates, and again last year due to the Northern California fire conditions. After this many-year delay, Giro’s Grinduro event emerged into a new, and very different, world.
A year ago, I was sitting in a cubicle, drawing lines and shapes that would ultimately become bridges. A tedious job that encouraged daydreaming, so I spent a lot of my time distracting myself with podcasts, audiobooks and YouTube videos. I remember watching a series of videos called The Impossible Route and feeling like, “They’re out there living, I’m in here… not”. Now, don’t get me wrong, working a desk job in an industry that betters society can be incredibly rewarding, but I wasn’t having fun. I wasn’t living the life that was right for me, which in my mind was filled with cycling, adventure, and photography.
Fast forward a year and some change, and I find myself on a three-hour Zoom call with Jeremiah Bishop discussing routes and logistics for Season 2, Episode 1 of The Impossible Route. The journey of how I got here can be saved for another time, but here I was, on the cusp of living. This is The Impossible Route from my perspective.
On April 12, 2022, Lael Wilcox set out to ride the 827-mile Arizona Trail faster than anyone had before. She completed her ride in 9 days, 8 hours, and 23 minutes on April 21. This is her story.
Note: Lael’s time is not recognized by the AZT Race administration which prohibits media coverage. The current official records: Men’s – Nate Ginzton – 9:10:44; Women’s – Chase Edwards – 10:18:59
The following is a love letter to Cyclocross and in particular photographing cyclocross. During the 2018-2019 season, I was blessed to attend a few races and got a chance to shoot freely and candidly with no one expecting anything from me but everyone letting me in and close. I had no idea what was about to happen to me, under the lashing rain of Overijse, a small cold flemish town, I fell in love with cycling once again, a way I never expected, cold, easy, mind-blowing and everlasting.
“We get to play like kids in the mud but as adults, what else could be better?” – Rebecca Gross
Still reeling from the loss of my father in February of 2020, I was in the depths of grief and drowning in the weight of his absence when I decided to accept my friend Jalen’s offer to go bikepacking for the first time. In his youth, my father loved spending time moving across mountains, and since I loved being outside too, I felt like going on this bikepacking trip was less of a pure adventure (although adventure would ensue) and more of a way to honor him by doing something that he enjoyed when he was young. I felt like doing something productive with my grief, to move my body forward and look back on all our memories together while observing how much he shaped who I am. In his youth he rode through Mexico on horseback transporting cattle between ranches and, while I was pedaling my bike on this trip across the land, I often thought about similar experiences we might have shared. As I rode through the Kokopelli trail on my first bikepacking trip, I took in the scenery and imagined what my dad felt when he was in the Sierras of Mexico every time I stared off into mountains or observed the star-filled night sky. I envisioned him looking at similar things as if we were sharing a moment.
Borgarfjörður eystri is unrecognizable from the Iceland I know. I have this mental image of Iceland: a black canvas of volcanic rock with broad strokes of green Icelandic moss. Yet, as we pedal into Borgarfjörður eystri, these expansive black and green landscapes yield to something entirely different. The color gold reigns king.
When I first saw the Scott Spark 910 previewed I had to do a double-take. A full-suspension bike with the suspension INSIDE the frame?! I’m sure some vintage mountain bike enthusiast will point out that someone did this in 1994, but this was my first time seeing a rear suspension integrated into a bike frame. I was doubly intrigued as I had been eagerly looking to try out the latest crop of short travel 29ers (read “downcountry”) that are so en vogue right now.
If you’ve been following along with my previous reviews, you’ll know that I’m not a huge internal cable/hose routing fan, and that still rings true. I feel that most internal routing is half-assed and enters and exits the frame multiple times unnecessarily. Now, what Scott has cooked up here is well done and I’m impressed by them going all-in on internal routing. I had many plans to tinker endlessly with this bike but, as I soon found out, this bike feels like it is meant to be a holistic package. Being ever-tempted by such a striking frame design, travel range, and the possibility to mount a frame bag easily on a full-suspension frame I had to take it for a spin.
I had a lot of reservations about going to Mid South 2022. COVID. Money. Time. Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to go. Bobby is one of my best friends, and I love his entire crew over in Stillwater. But, still…COVID, money, time. Then I saw that something spectacular was happening.
Is bikepacking in Iceland fun on a gravel bike? That’s the one question on my mind as the plane touches down for my 5th visit to the country. With “make do with what you have” as our mantra, my two friends, Daylen, Quinton and I wanted to see if the gravel bikes we already own would be up for the challenge. I found several fat bike trip reports but very few gravel bike trip reports online, so I pour over maps, make some educated guesses, and trust I’ll figure it out as the rubber hits the road.
In escaping the concrete canyons of New York City, the idea of new horizons, and the promise of unfamiliar faces drew me into what became a 4,112-mile bicycle tour across the deep south and southwestern United States.
