The Radavist

The X-Mid series of ultralight tents from Canada’s Durston Gear has gotten a lot of attention since they were first launched in 2018.  Ryan Wilson has had a chance to put his Durston X-Mid through the wringer on trips across rugged regions of Asia and South America.  Read on to find out about his thoughts on the tent after two years and hundreds of nights with it. 

Over the last handful of years, no piece of camping gear has received more hype across the internet than the Durston X-Mid series of tents. When I bought mine, two years ago, I had to virtually “camp out” on Durston’s site on the drop day to make sure I would secure one of these highly praised tents like I was trying to track down some limited edition Air Force 1’s.

Even as I impatiently refreshed their site, by the time I finally got in, entered my shipping address in the checkout form, and clicked “Buy”, the batch was already sold out within a couple of minutes.

While a sub-1kg double-wall tent that packs small and runs about $300 all-in sounded very appealing, I couldn’t help but think “Is there really a tent that is worth this?” Thankfully, when the next batch dropped, I was able to snag an X-Mid 1, and these days they are perpetually in stock on their site.

Now, after two years of heavy use, spending hundreds of nights nestled inside the X-Mid on trips throughout Asia and South America, I’m ready to answer the question… Does it live up to the hype?

X-Mid Origins and Design

Dan Durston started as an accomplished long-distance thru-hiker, inevitably getting bitten by the gear bug, which sent him down a rabbit hole to make his own Dyneema composite fiber tent 15 years ago. Finally, in 2018, after years of tinkering with design ideas to solve problems that he was finding with existing gear options, he and his wife T launched Durston Gear with the X-Mid series of tents.

With the X-Mid, Dan wanted to create a “trekking pole” style tent that prioritized ease of setup, weight efficiency, and stormworthiness. He set out to accomplish this by utilizing a simple rectangular footprint design while angling the inner sleeping area within that rectangle to create a unique parallelogram-shaped inner with offset poles. This increased usable headroom while also moving the poles away from the center of the doors as you find on many ultralight tents, and created a large vestibule on each side, with extra storage space at the head and foot end of the inner.

Variations

While the X-Mid that I got is the original one-person Sil Polyester version, there are several variations to fit just about any situation these days. They can generally be lumped into two categories. Those with a single-wall Dyneema fabric design for people looking to go as light as possible, or those with double-wall SilPoly fabric designs for anyone looking to save a bit of money or would rather not deal with the condensation issues that inherently come with single-wall tents. The double-wall versions are also available with solid inners for anyone camping in very cold areas or places with blowing sand.

All of these models have their differences, but all are based around the same non-freestanding X-Mid design geometry (though a freestanding version is in the works).

A Simple Setup

There are a few factors that led me toward picking up an X-Mid, but the main thing I was looking for was a double wall shelter that still packs small and comes in at a reasonable weight, in the 1kg range. While many tents use funky struts or a big spiderweb of poles with proprietary parts that can break in the field and tend to exponentially increase the packed size of the tent, the Durston forgoes these and relies on geometry to create a tent with enough stability and space.

This simple, two-straight-pole design is one of the reasons I tend to lean toward trekking pole-style tents over freestanding these days, even if it does require a bit more brain energy when you have to pitch on hard floors. I like that if something were to happen to my poles, I could swap in a sturdy branch or even my tripod for one in a pinch, and I’m probably more likely to be able to find a suitable replacement while on the road compared to the proprietary pole set that comes with most dome style tents.

Pitching the X-Mid when you’ve got a decent ground for staking is easy. Stake out the four corners into as perfect a rectangle as you can and get it tensioned at the corners before putting in each pole. How good the pitch will be will depend largely on how true and taut your rectangle is before you put the poles in. Big points here for a fly-first pitch, which is key when you’re scrambling to set up the tent in a downpour, as it keeps the inner from getting wet, something I’ve dealt with in the past with many dome-style tents.

Once I’ve got the basic structure ready, I always stake out the doors so that they’re easy to operate with one hand. Four stakes total for an ultra-minimalist pitch, and six stakes for my standard pitch with the doors anchored. If it’s a little breezy, I’ll also stake out the included guy lines from each peak of the tent. Beyond that, you can use up to eight more guy-out points to create a pitch that will hold up to some real wind, as I had to regularly on my ride across Mongolia and many times in Bolivia.

The only real knock that I have with the X-Mid setup is the footprint. It takes up quite a bit of real estate for a one-person tent, and in certain areas, it can make finding a spot big enough to pitch it tricky. There are some ways to do a “skinny pitch” that effectively removes a vestibule, but I’ve found them to be less than ideal if the weather conditions aren’t great.

Freestanding vs. Non-Freestanding

Having extensively used both types of tents while on tour over the last eight years, I can say that I’ve never been super concerned about whether my tent is freestanding or not. Are there situations that are made slightly more complicated by not having freestanding? Yes, but I’ve never had a situation that wasn’t relatively easy to solve.

If you’re camping on a hard floor like concrete and wind isn’t a factor, you can simply use heavy objects to anchor the corners. I’ve wrapped the ends of guy lines around chairs that were sitting around in a storage warehouse and stacked my bags on top.

If the ground is extremely sandy or rocky but you need a strong pitch, I use the “big rock, little rock” method where you tie off the end of your guy line around a small rock and then anchor it to the ground by putting a larger rock in front of it. This can work in basically any scenario, as long as you can find rocks or other heavy objects that are suitable.

I use TarpTent’s carbon PolyPoles with the X-Mid, but these days Durston makes their own Z-Flick poles which look just as nice and have an easier adjustment system. A set of Z-Flick poles will set you back $70 and add 186g to your setup.

Stormworthiness

With just about any ultralight tent that isn’t a pure pyramid design, there are going to be sides of the tent that stand up better to the wind than others. I always try to pitch the X-Mid with one of the narrow ends facing the wind, though in a place like Mongolia where the wind tends to shift around through the night, you can find that wind coming from the side and hitting the larger surface area will inevitably put more strain on the tent and cause it to bow-in noticeably more, decreasing interior space, and creating more tension on those important corner stake points. Overall, I found the wind performance to be very solid, but it’s important to achieve a good pitch when the conditions are going to be challenging.

I tend to forgo the super light titanium stakes that came with my X-Mid in favor of some longer and more durable MSR Groundhogs for the four corners, and I use the lighter stuff for the less consequential stake points like the doors and extra guy lines. Note: Durston has changed the stakes that they sell with the X-Mid since I bought mine, so I cannot comment on those.

One thing I would like to see is a bit more leash on those corner stake points as it can be tricky to line up a spot without rocks getting in the way with such little length to play with. I’d also probably opt for a slightly beefier gauge on the cord for those important corner stake points as well, as I had two of the cords snap during a particularly gusty night in Bolivia. Admittedly, they already had a bit of wear (always bring spare cordage!). Still, this is stuff that is pretty easy and cheap for the user to swap out to suit their use case, so it’s far from a deal breaker.

The X-Mid 1 comes with the seams factory weather-sealed, something that separates it from a lot of the other smaller tent companies out there these days where you often have to pay extra or seal it yourself.  It’s made in Vietnam in the same factory that produces MSR’s tents, and I found mine to have very high quality materials and stitching.

I had no issues with rain leakage or splashback at all with mine, and the inner mesh kept me totally dry on the inside, regardless of condensation on the rain fly. One big advantage of the double-wall setup is you can slam the tent down close to the ground on a particularly cold or windy night to keep the cold air out and not worry as much about condensation building up since you probably won’t accidentally touch it.

The SilPoly X-Mid has #5 waterproof zippers on the outer fly and #3 zips on the inner mesh. Only toward the end of my two years with the tent did I find a couple of the inner zips starting to wear out and give me problems, while the zips on the rain fly are still going strong. An impressive run as they’ve dealt with some particularly windy and sandy environments which tend to rapidly destroy zippers.

SilPoly vs. SilNylon vs. Dyneema

Another selling point on the X-Mid for me was Duston’s utilization of SilPoly fabric instead of SilNylon. SilPoly doesn’t wet out or stretch nearly to the degree that SilNylon does, which means your pitch stays taut throughout the night or during heavy rains.  No more having to adjust the pitch halfway through the night because the material has sagged and is now flapping in the wind or pushing against the inner mesh of the tent, exposing you to condensation. In the morning, it dries out a lot faster as well, so you don’t have to worry about waiting around at camp as long for it to dry.

Some will say that SilPoly is less durable than SilNylon, but after using the SilPoly Six Moon Designs Lunar Solo and this Durston for nearly four years combined, I haven’t seen any signs of that at all and can say that I would not go back to a SilNylon tent.

As for Dyneema (aka DCF), which Durston offers the X-Mid in as well via the “Pro” series, this is a tougher call and comes down more to personal preference. The top-spec’d one-person DCF version of the X-Mid comes in at a ridiculous 440g with the DCF floor, not including the stakes or poles, while the SilPoly version comes in at 795g.

Certainly, a 355g difference is nothing to scoff at, though there are more differences than just the material to reach that weight. The biggest difference is that the DCF version is a hybrid single-wall tent, which only has mesh on the sides. This means you’ll have to deal with condensation if you camp in climates where this is a frequent issue. The DCF version also downsizes to #3 zips for the outer fly, which makes them more prone to failure when compared to the beefier #5 on the SilPoly tent.

The other downsides are inherent with the DCF fabric itself, with the first being packed size. While you might expect the DCF version of the tent that weighs nearly half of the SilPoly version to pack super tiny in comparison as well, they are essentially the same size when packed, even though the SilPoly version contains a full inner mesh.

The last downside of Dyneema is the price. The fabric is inherently expensive and brings the price of the full DCF one-person version up to $639 before adding the poles or stakes versus $240 for the SilPoly.  That’s a pretty substantial difference.

If money isn’t a factor and you don’t mind tending to condensation, the “Pro” Dyneema version looks like a pretty amazing tent that barely adds any weight to your bike, however, I was looking for a double-wall shelter for the wet weather of Colombia and Ecuador, so I went for the SilPoly and didn’t regret it.

Livability

At a shade over 6’2” (189cm), I find myself close to the upper end of how tall most tents are designed for. This applies to the Durston as well. When I’m laying down flat in my sleeping bag, on top of a 3.5” sleeping pad with my legs stretched all the way out, I’m basically touching both ends of the mesh on the tent. Still, there’s enough room between the mesh and the outer fly that this really isn’t an issue.

The offset pole design does a good job of providing headroom while sitting up, no matter which way you’re facing, and also makes sure the pole does not get in the way when you’re getting in and out of the tent.

My biggest gripe with the X-Mid overall is that with how wide the overall footprint of the tent is, I think the inner could be quite a bit wider so that there is a bit more interior gear storage, and maybe a bit more shoulder space as well. Currently, the X-Mid really favors vestibule storage for gear as the vestibules are truly massive on both sides.

For me, on a Long/Wide sleeping pad (78×25”), it leaves very little extra floor space on the inside, which is where I prefer to store the bags that hold my camera, batteries, computer, etc. While it fits me and my sleeping kit just fine, I always felt a little bit cramped inside the 1 person version while squeezing in extra gear that I didn’t want to leave in the vestibules.  In hindsight, I probably would just gone with the 2-person version as it doesn’t add a ton of weight anyways, but then I would run into the issue of having an even larger footprint to find a spot for, so it’s not an ideal solution in my eyes.

If you’re shorter or use a smaller sleeping pad, the interior space will be less of an issue or not an issue at all for you. Ditto if you don’t mind leaving the vast majority of your gear in the vestibule. However, if I were building my dream tent, I’d love to see a version of the X-Mid that prioritizes inner tent volume at the cost of a bit of the vestibule space to keep the overall footprint size down.

At a minimum, I’d love to see larger mesh pockets added to the side walls of the inner tent (as there are in the 2 person version) in addition to the included pockets at the peak, as these would help to bring some more items off of the floor and add very little weight.

Always Improving

One of the things that really sold me on an X-Mid was just how engaged Dan is with the online community to the point where you know he’s an absolute gear junky. Spend any time surfing through YouTube videos or “Ultralight” forums where high-performance outdoor gear is discussed and you’re bound to see his name pop up all over the place.

When the topic is his own gear, he always seems super responsive to feedback to the point where the tent went through 20 different iterations in the first 4 years of production alone, with each model being tweaked around user feedback. The latest versions feature magnetic doors, different stakes, and a host of other small tweaks to improve the overall design.

So… Is it Worthy of the Hype?

After two years of heavy usage, I can confidently say that the buzz around the Durston X-Mid was warranted. It strikes a really nice balance between weight, durability, packed size, weather resistance, and price that will be attractive to a wide range of people. Perfect tents that suit everyone’s needs don’t exist as all require some sacrifices here and there, but I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the X-Mid 1 to anyone who is in the market for a 1kg (w/poles) double wall tent, and who doesn’t mind the slightly large overall footprint relative to the inner or the fact that it is not free-standing. Dan clearly spent a lot of time sweating over the details of this tent when he was designing it, and it clearly shows in the final product.

Pros

• Double wall design
• Fly-first pitch
• Good packability and weight for the size
• Massive vestibules for gear storage
• High quality materials and construction
• SilPoly fabric doesn’t sag like nylon
• Easy to get a good pitch once you get the hang of it
• Straight poles pack flat for easier storage on the bike
• Good weather resistance (no seam sealer required)
• Very competitive price at $240 w/o poles or $310 w/poles

Cons

• Needs a large area to pitch.  Large footprint relative to inner mesh living area size
• Not Freestanding
• Not a huge amount of gear storage space inside the inner mesh w/large sleeping pads
• Short corner guy lines
• Line-locks can be fiddly
• Could use more interior pockets

For more info on the Durston X-Mid 1 and all of the other models in the X-Mid series of tents, head over to Durston’s website.

As Ryan Wilson continues his bike tour south from Colombia to Chile, he runs into the beginning of Peru’s infamous storm season.  Follow along as Ryan has a few close calls in a region that was home to one of the earliest civilizations in the Peruvian Andes.

After tracing my old tracks across one of my favorite roads in the world at Portachuelo de Llanganuco, I found myself at a crossroads. I had to decide whether to climb and descend the iconic paved switchbacks over Punta Olimpica or set off down some unknown (to me) roads heading south. While the nostalgia kick I’d been on was nice, re-riding some old routes that kicked off my first big tour, new roads were calling my name.

From the quiet village of Chacas, I set out on a drizzly morning toward San Luis, with eyes on continuing up the mountain toward the pass at Abra Huachucocha. However, on the final kilometers into San Luis, I could hear the steady groans of thunder rumbling, with dark clouds flickering from horizontal lightning streaking across the sky in the direction of the pass.  I’ve seen this a few times before in the Andes and know by now that it tends to end poorly, so I called it an early day and hung out in a San Luis hospedaje (hotel) while the mountains got hammered by lightning strikes throughout the afternoon.

It was already October by this point, so the occasionally sketchy afternoon weather of shoulder season had fully set in. I can deal with some cold rain, which can be managed with proper clothing and by keeping a steady pace to keep the body temperature up, but getting caught out in lightning storms up in these mountains is where the fun stops for me. Peru’s ideal riding months are actually in their winter (mid-May to mid-September) where conditions can be very cold at night, but are typically sunny and mild for most of the day. Come October and beyond, the weather starts to shift, especially in this region where the mountains and the jungle to the east create the perfect conditions for stormy weather.

Ascending Abra Huachucocha

Leaving San Luis the next morning, a light rain had already started.  Again, not a great sign as things tend to escalate throughout the day, with morning being your best shot at good weather.  I didn’t have much interest in hanging out in San Luis another day, so I hit the road anyways, with the plan to either camp near the pass if the weather didn’t get worse, or just blast down the long descent on the other side of the mountain if it wasn’t looking too good.

The road was surprisingly quiet considering it connects two fairly active towns.  It was a classic Peruvian climb with a smooth gradient and hard-packed dirt. The mountains were acting shy behind a veil of clouds all day, but every now and then I’d still get a glimpse of some impressive rock formations.

Before I even reached the pass, the rumblings of thunder were growing around me while flashes of lightning danced near distant peaks in the direction I came from. I already knew my plans to camp up near the lakes were cooked, so I set my mind on crossing the pass and riding all the way to the town of Huari before I ever crested the 4,341m (14,242ft) summit.

As I started the descent and saw hints of sun hitting the valley far below, I knew I made the right call. Before long I was back in the warmth of the sun, passing through small roadside villages and roads with shepherds trying to corral their goats and sheep.

Passing time in Huari

Huari was a lively place with quite a view. As is standard in these small Peruvian towns, people set off loud firecrackers and all sorts of noise makers at all hours of the day and night. These were made particularly loud in Huari due to the shape of the valley and the surrounding mountains amplifying every bang. I asked a local on the street if there was a holiday or something they were celebrating that would cause them to light off so many fireworks. “No, not really. They are celebrating boredom,” he said with a chuckle.

More to Peru than Machu Picchu

An easy day’s ride led me to the town of Chavín de Huantar. There are many important historical locations across the Peruvian Andes outside of Machu Picchu, which gets by far the most attention. Yet Chavín de Huantar is one of the most important in all of South America as it was once the central hub of one of the first developed civilizations in the Andes, dating back as far as 1200 B.C.

Archaeologists believe it was once the hotspot for all manner of community activities such as ritualistic human sacrifice and the consumption of copious amounts of powerful psychedelics.  It’s also not a madhouse filled with thousands of tourists taking photos on their iPads like Machu Picchu is every day, so it’s worth a visit if you’re in the neighborhood.

Crossing the Cordillera

When I was in Huaraz, I picked up a route on quiet dirt roads to connect from Chavín to the southern end of the Cordillera Blanca from a local mountain biker who runs the hotel I was staying at (Benkawasi).  It was said to roughly follow a route that people have been taking for thousands of years to get back and forth from Chavín to the coast, so it seemed like a no-brainer to follow their steps, to imagine what it must have been like crossing these mountains thousands of years ago.

The climb started unusually steep for Peru but soon eased up and cut through an impressive canyon surrounded by rock walls.  Before long I started to reach higher elevations again and could look back to find a view of towering snow-covered peaks of the Cordillera Blanca in the distance, serving as a reminder that I’d have to cross them once again over the next couple of days.

I reached the highway and breezed down a long, fast descent before running into Diego from Brazil and his pup companion who were set to climb the same road I was. He was strapped to the gills with not just a dog in a basket but also a guitar! What a legend!

We rode together for an hour or so before stopping at a little restaurant on the side of the road for a late lunch of trucha (trout), and Diego decided to camp out in a small shed near the restaurant since I was continuing up the mountain for a particularly high wild camp at 4700m (15,400 ft) and he wasn’t sure that his sleeping kit would be warm enough up there.

I turned off the paved road and onto a dirt track that kept on climbing. Near the top of the ridge, a huge view opened up toward Yanashallash and Huallanca peaks with the road winding around below. There was a perfect little depression on the hillside so I made that my spot for one very chilly night.

Racing the Storm

In the morning the clouds were suspended in the air, draped across the surrounding landscape with only hints of sun shooting through. I had a long day in store, with plenty of ups and downs at very high altitudes, and the restless night in the thin air at 4700m wasn’t going to help me out a whole lot, so I had to get moving early.

The undulating stretch of trocha (what locals call dirt roads) that followed is one of my favorites in all of Peru as it really gives a real sense of scale to these mountains. On a clear day, you can see all the way down to the peaks of the Cordillera Huayhuash in the south.

Every curve in the road revealed another hanging glacier on one side and layers of endless mountains on the other. It’s the kind of place where I find those moments when nothing could wipe the smile from my face. When my body momentarily forgets that my energy is drained to zero and I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by gratitude that I get to exist in this moment and this place.

With most of the climbing of the day done, I descended from the pass under ominous skies. The clouds let out a barrage of hail, rain, and lightning just as I arrived in the town of Catac and I stood under the awning of a tienda (small shop) having miraculously kept myself almost entirely dry by a matter of seconds.

As the deluge slowed to a trickle after about 30 minutes, I made my way around town looking for a place to stay. One by one each hotel told me they were full, which seemed odd. Hotels are generally easy to track down in most Peruvian towns.  Eventually, I was told by one hotel owner that there was a construction project in the works nearby and every single hotel was booked with workers for months within a 30km radius. Ughh.

I got back on the bike as day to night and hit the main road. Camping options were non-existent to completely grim side-of-the-road situations that I really wasn’t interested in, so I made the call to just ride as fast as I could to Huaraz, 40 kilometers down the paved road, where I knew I could get a place for the night.

Adding to the grim situation, the drizzling rain turned back into a full downpour. Lightning was hammering the hillsides just across the valley from me, no more than one kilometer away. I stopped for a second at the side of the road, but there was nowhere to seek any kind of shelter so I just got back on the bike and kept pushing on. There was so much water on the road that each car going past kicked up a giant wave of road water straight onto me. Lovely. I couldn’t be more wet if I were at the bottom of the ocean.

An Escape to the Coast

I got to Huaraz dripping (and probably smelling) like a wet dog after what turned into an impromptu 100km day and took a well-earned rest day… errr, actually three. That last stormy evening turned out to be the final straw for me as I made the call to ride over the Cordillera Negra (Black Mountains) and descend to the perpetually dry coastal region for a much-needed change of scenery (and climate). The allotted days on my Peruvian visa were running out anyways, so I’d have to quickly head south toward my next destination on my route toward Chile… the Bolivian altiplano.

Over the last eight years, Ryan Wilson has been traveling all over the world by bike on an extended tour and has learned plenty of lessons planning trips along the way.  Below, Ryan dives into some of the most frequent questions that people ask when they’re looking to plan their first bike tour.

After seven years, Ryan Wilson returns to the Peruvian Cordillera Blanca to re-ride some of the roads that inspired him to take up bike touring in the first place and explore some new roads around the tourist hub of Huaraz.  Come along for a ride in one of the most spectacular regions of the world.

With a seemingly endless array of dirt roads scattered throughout the Peruvian Andes, it’s easy to see why it has become a favorite destination for bike travelers like Ryan Wilson.  During his latest trip to the country, Ryan looks to connect the northern city of Cajamarca to the Ancash region along some rarely traveled dirt tracks through the Sunchubamba Game Reserve.  With little information about this zone to be found online, read on to find out how it went. 

Last year, Ryan Wilson met up with fellow bike traveler Joe Sasada to tackle the dirt road version of the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route.  In Part one, they got their feet wet on this classic route, but in this chapter, Ryan and Joe visit the heart of Ecuador’s iconic volcano corridor and run into the trials and tribulations that come with any good bike tour.  Read on for a slice of the highlights and lowlights of their ride across the Andes.

After extensive touring through Colombia, Peru, Chile, and Argentina, the only remaining “missing link” in Ryan Wilson‘s Andean traverse was Ecuador. Last year, he met up with fellow cyclo-tourist Joe Sasada to share miles on the dirt-road variation of the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route, an 850-mile mountainous traverse through the country’s volcanic corridor. Read on for Ryan’s introduction to Ecuador…

When Ryan Wilson made his first trip to Colombia in 2022, there was one region of the country that was high on his list to ride, but after getting distracted by the abundant opportunities for exploration, he somehow found his visa days dwindling. Naturally, when he was able to return for a lengthier trip the following year, heading to Boyacá—birthplace of Colombian road cycling legends like Nairo Quintana—was a top priority…

Over the years I’ve slowly tinkered with my touring setup to really nail down which pieces of kit work best for the type of riding I do and where I’m heading next.  I’m always looking for new products that are versatile in terms of the climate and terrain they can be used on, and most importantly I want them to last, as this stuff can be difficult to replace while on the road.  Most of the items on this list are things I’ve started to use over the last year or two, but there are also a couple of items that have been a staple of my setup for the last 7 years.

With warning signs that sandal season has officially closed in Mongolia, Ryan Wilson high-tails it through a 600-kilometer leg of riding to reach his last stop of the journey. But while much of this trip has found him wondering at the vastness of the steppe, this closing section shows a different side of the country. Read on for Ryan’s final (for now) account of riding in Mongolia…

After getting acquainted with Mongolia during a big loop through the Altai Mountains to start his trip, Ryan Wilson was intent on riding as far east as he could, with the ultimate goal of reaching the capital city of Ulaanbaatar. A 550-kilometer track from Brigitte & Ivo over at bikepackground.com looked like a promising guide. After enjoying the luxuries of Khovd for a few days, Ryan set off into the arid expanse toward the Zavkhan province, retracing their steps through the land that connects the Gobi Desert with the Khangai Mountains. 

After finishing the route up from Bulgan, I arrived in the largest city I’d come across in the entire trip outside of Ulaanbaatar. Yet, with a shade under 30,000 inhabitants, it’s not exactly a metropolis. Still, after so many days out in the middle of nowhere, it was nice to have a hot shower and a couple of restaurants to choose from. A serious upgrade from settling for boiling instant noodles in a hotel’s electric kettle in some of the smaller villages.

I intended to come here to visit the military guard post, which is responsible for issuing permits to reach the Altai Tavan-Bogd region at the border with China. In the past, one was allowed to simply use their satellite tracker as a means to be allowed entry or higher a guide on a horse right at the park entrance to obtain a permit, but since Covid, they changed the rules up and tourists could no longer go to the region without a local jeep tour guide straight from the city of Ölgii.

Being tailed by a jeep for a week in the countryside isn’t exactly my idea of a great time, so I started looking for alternatives to fill that gap in my route. A quick glance over some satellite maps showed a small cluster of snowy peaks that were only about 50km away as the crow flies, and there was a little white-checkered line crossing them on the map, so this seemed like a nice plan B, no chaperon required.

This is a continuation of Ryan Wilson’s Altai Traverse Reportage. Read part one here: The Altai Traverse: Finding Tracks in the Mongolian Countryside

In a remote corner of the Mongolian Altai, about 40 kilometers from the border with China, I set off toward a desolate valley from the small, windswept, and dusty village of Bulgan. My next resupply point, about 125km down the road, was, confusingly, another town named Bulgan. I never quite got the hang of the Mongolian naming schemes in my time there, as it was quite common to find a handful of towns and villages across the country with identical names on any given map, and sometimes each town had two or three names they might be referred to by depending on which map you’re looking it, which sometimes makes it tricky getting reliable information.

It was back in 2020, during my first bike tour through southern Turkey, that I first became aware of Soulrider Frameworks via Instagram. Based in the heart of Istanbul, just a stone’s throw from the Bosphorus Strait that separates Europe and Asia, Yasin Bingöl runs a one-man show, building custom bikes from the first design ideas to the final build and everything in between.

Traveling to Mongolia has been a dream for Ryan Wilson since he first got into bike touring. Vast open spaces dotted with interesting geographical features, dirt tracks as far as the eye can see, and a history and culture that runs incredibly deep all contribute to making this east Asian country a dynamic experience. Sandwiched between Russia and China though, Mongolia can be tricky to access and, as a result, it often seemed to get pushed down the list of places for Ryan to visit, but when he finally had a chance to spend a summer there, he jumped on it…

It’s always great to get a chance to cross paths with internet acquaintances on the road and there are very few places like the Boyacá region of Colombia that enable that, thanks to Dean and Dang’s classic “Oh Boyacá!” route. I was heading north along the track while most are aimed southbound, which found me crossing with long and short-distance tourers on a daily basis while grinding up these infamous Colombian mountain passes. I spent some miles with two UK riders and, of course, we talked gear. Read on for a recap of our overnighter around the El Cocuy National Park and a closer look at Joe’s Mason Cycles RAW Andean Tourer.