Found in the Mountains Good Friday Ride!

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Found in the Mountains Good Friday Ride!

Morgan and Stephanie are hosting an adventure pace, mixed-surface ride in Vancouver after their usual coffee outside on Friday:

“We’re crafting up a route that will keep us out of traffic and exploring off-the-beaten-path dirt and neighbourhood connectors around North Vancouver. This will be an absolutely no-drop, adventure pace ride. Expect about 50 km of mixed-surface riding with options to bail out along the way if you want a shorter ride or need to get somewhere earlier in the day.”

Get the details at Found in the Mountains.

Showing Found in the Mountains LA

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Showing Found in the Mountains LA

Morgan and Stephanie from Found in the Mountains are here in Los Angeles and over the next few weeks, we’ll be showing them around to the local rides and maybe we’ll even do another group ride or two. While our touring couple has seen much of the West Coast so far, I don’t think they were prepared for the coastal desert that is Los Angeles, in the middle of the summer.

We’ll be riding early in the mountains to keep cool and laying low during the heat of the day. Expect lots of coverage from their trip to hit the site next week!

We Met Found in the Mountains for Margaritas and Fish Tacos

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We Met Found in the Mountains for Margaritas and Fish Tacos

With group rides in Los Angeles, ya never know what you’re going to get. As I was packing the night before for this ride, my girlfriend asked me how many people I thought would show up. My response: either 20 or 4. In my experience, the latter is easier to manage, especially when rides like this include around 30 miles of inner-city road riding, yet I have wrangled enough cats to know how to deal with larger groups as well.

While half of this ride is indeed on sealed roads, the 30 that is on dirt is some of the finest Los Angeles has to offer. Dirt Mulholland takes you in the Santa Monica Mountains and intersects miles upon miles of singletrack and fire roads. You could literally spend days riding in the mountains, provided you’ve got access to water.

Four people showed up in the morning. Four new faces, two of which were tourists, who happened to find themselves in LA this weekend. We met up for coffee and left 15 minutes behind schedule to allow any Saturday morning stragglers to roll up. Confident with our group’s size, we headed out through Hollywood and up Nichols Canyon Road, a climb that is often hectic during the week, yet at 7:30am on a Saturday was quite peaceful. With our heads down and in a paceline, we snaked our way to the dirt and that’s where the fun began.

After casually spinning through the mountains, we dropped down to the Pacific Coast Highway via Topanga Canyon HWY 27 and met up with Found in the Mountains at the Reel Inn for fish tacos, margaritas, and stories.

The ride home is always interesting. If you’re visiting LA as a cyclist, it’s a great way to see the places you’ll probably never want to visit again. This includes: Beverly Hills, Melrose, Rodeo Drive and most of Hollywood. As we zig-zagged our way back to the east side, I found it funny how our caravan of cyclists were keeping pace with luxury cars, busses, motorcycles and other vehicles, once again proving that the bicycle is always the best form of transportation in a city.

Transportation and a vehicle for socializing along 60 miles of fun on a Saturday morning.

Found in the Mountains Los Angeles Group Ride

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Found in the Mountains Los Angeles Group Ride

Our friends at @FoundintheMountains have made it down the California coast and will be arriving in the Los Angeles area on Saturday. We’d like to welcome them to LA in style, so we’re throwing a group ride. Expect a 60 mile day total, with around 4,500′ of climbing. Half of the day will be on dirt, the other half through Saturday morning traffic, so keep your whits sharp!

The plan is to meet at Intelligentsia on Sunset Avenue in Silver Lake at 6:30am for a 7am roll-out. BE ON TIME. We will be leaving right at 7am. No excuses!

You should bring plenty of food, sunblock, tools, tubes and pack your big bottles. It’s going to be a hot day, with the highs in the 90’s. There is a water stop at mile 18. After cruising on some of LA’s finest inner-city dirt, we’ll drop down Topanga Canyon and meet our friends at 11am at the Reel Inn on the PCH, eat tacos, drink a margarita or two and then ride back to the east side via Santa Monica Blvd. This is a no-drop ride. There is a lot of climbing, so be prepared.

Ride your cross or road bike! If you’d like to load this route in your GPS, here’s my Strava file and if you’ve never ridden Dirt Mulholland, check out some photos from our Getting Dirty post!

We Will From Now On Be Found in the Mountains – Morgan Taylor

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We Will From Now On Be Found in the Mountains – Morgan Taylor

Words and photos by Morgan Taylor.

Bikes instead of flights. That was the idea. Stephanie and I have been scheming on this plan for quite a while – about nine months to be exact. You see, we got married back in October, and wanted to go on an extended trip to celebrate. Over the winter we threw ideas around about what kinds of bikes we could ride on our honeymoon trip, and then keep running as fun all-rounders when we were back home.

We landed on the Soma Wolverine, a bike that in its few short years has developed a bit of a cult following. What surprised me, however, is that not many people had built these bikes with 27.5 wheels. There were so few people out there doing it that I wondered whether it would work out. I calculated wheel diameters, I stuffed various wheels into Wolverine frames on trips to the city, and I eventually decided that 27.5 with a larger volume tire was our ticket. More on the bikes in a later piece, though.

As the months moved along, a plan came together to ride straight from home in southeast BC, over the two mountain chains to the Rockies, and loosely follow the Continental Divide with national parks in our sights. Glacier, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton were within striking distance. At some point we’d head west, likely to northern California to see Yosemite and the Sierras on the way to Los Angeles. None of this was set in stone, though; we simply wanted to follow our noses and local recommendations on a mixed surface adventure through the western US.

Weekend Wanderlust with Found in the Mountains

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Weekend Wanderlust with Found in the Mountains

Photos by Morgan Taylor

If you have been following Morgan on Instagram, then you’ve seen a few recent posts, documenting the first days of their massive tour. He and his wife Stephanie are riding from British Columbia to California (eventually) and documenting it both here at the Radavist and on the @FoundInTheMountains Instagram. What I like the most about this documentation is the daily updates on each photo, so follow along, wherever you might be!

Kumis and Glaciers: Stories From Bicycle Touring Kyrgyzstan’s Tian Shan Mountains

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Kumis and Glaciers: Stories From Bicycle Touring Kyrgyzstan’s Tian Shan Mountains

Wild horses, high mountains, glaciers, and nomads—Ana Zamorano first heard stories of adventure and misadventure from bike touring in Kyrgyzstan while riding in The Andes. The allure of adventure was too enticing and she made a pact to experience the vast valleys and high passes of the Tian Shan Mountains herself. Read on for her retelling of a trip that included loaded high-altitude touring, a glimpse into the region’s nomadic culture, and endless mountains in the distance. 

100-Mile Love Song: The 2023 Lost & Found Gravel Festival

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100-Mile Love Song: The 2023 Lost & Found Gravel Festival

After an almost-decade long run, the Lost & Found Gravel Festival continues to provide adventurous-minded riders with dynamic and challenging terrain in northern California’s Lost Sierra Mountains. Registration for any of the event’s 100-mile, 60-mile and 35-mile courses goes directly to supporting the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship‘s Lost Sierra Route, a route that seeks to connect 15 mountain communities and foster economic prosperity through recreation. Billy Sinkford joined in for the mixed terrain fun this year and shares moments from the race along with photos of the Builders’ Bazaar.

The Races Will Go On: No Date Changes in Store for the 2023 Downieville Classic or Lost and Found Gravel

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The Races Will Go On: No Date Changes in Store for the 2023 Downieville Classic or Lost and Found Gravel

It may still look like winter in the High Sierra, but the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship has summer on the mind and is counting down the days until the Downieville Classic and the Lost and Found Gravel Festival, presented by Cervélo, one of the nonprofit’s biggest fundraisers of the year. Lost and Found will still take place on June 3 in Portola, despite the exceptionally snowy winter and late arrival of spring in the Lost Sierra…

Dził Diyiní Biyí Iiná Hóló: Life Within the Sacred Mountains at Rezduro 2022

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Dził Diyiní Biyí Iiná Hóló: Life Within the Sacred Mountains at Rezduro 2022

Rezduro takes place in the remote community of Hardrock, Arizona which is located on the Black Mesa plateau/region on the Navajo Nation. What started out as a vision by Nigel James and friends has turned into the first and only Indigenous-led mountain bike enduro race. Nigel James dreamed of bridging his grandparents’ sheep herding trails with his passion for mountain bike enduro racing as a result, Rezduro was born in 2021. Rezduro is organized by Diné (the Navajo people) on Diné lands.

Ruta de Los Padres: Four Days Bikepacking the Sierra Madre and San Rafael Mountains

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Ruta de Los Padres: Four Days Bikepacking the Sierra Madre and San Rafael Mountains

“We’re cultivating this weekend, a few weeks earlier than we normally do. It’s getting drier every year, and harder to grow grapes in a dry farm system”. This passing statement tickled somewhere on my brain stem as Steve’s words seeped in and we all gazed up at the Sierra Madres. I wondered if the mountains too might be getting drier every year just like down below at Condors Hope, the 20-acre ranch situated at the opening of Bates Canyon, the gateway into our four-day bikepacking mission.

Two years ago, nearly to the day, my friends Erin, Campbell, Ian, and I all came down to Condors Hope to embark on a similar long weekend trip to explore and experience the landscapes, otherwise referred to as the high steep broken mountains, that had, at the time, just been reopened to oil and gas leasing by the Trump administration. We returned from that trip two weeks before the world shut down from COVID, and well, you pretty much know the rest of that story.

Nine days, 350 miles, and Awe: Bikepacking Southern Utah’s Henry Mountains

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Nine days, 350 miles, and Awe: Bikepacking Southern Utah’s Henry Mountains

The Henry Mountains of southern Utah have fascinated me ever since one of my geology professors in graduate school eloquently described their unique setting and their unlikely stature in the field of geomorphology. As a student, I found myself eagerly diving into a century-old geologic report to learn more, and then as a professor, I found myself taking my own students to the area to experience its grandeur in person. But a deeper understanding of the landscape could only come from moving through it for days on end. I finally had the opportunity to make that happen in late November with the company of my friend Chase Edwards – nine chilly days, 350 miles of pedaling, climbing six range’s most prominent peaks, and endless awe.

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Riding Fixed, Up Mountains, With Pros: Ep. 14 – Oatman w/ Leo Rodgers

Our friend Leo Rodgers takes off to Oatman, Arizona for the latest “Riding Fixed, Up Mountains, With Pros” video from State Bicycle Co

“Hailing from Florida, by way of Southern California, Leo Rodgers has always craved speed and adventure. In 2007, Leo was involved in a motorcycle accident that significantly changed his life. Leo has since turned this unfortunate event into an opportunity to inspire others. Since then, Leo has traveled around the world, competing as a Paralympic medalist, participating in the most grueling gravel events, and of course, street cycling (O.G. Alleycats). Leo’s mission is to use cycling to inspire and motivate others to take action. He continues to spread his message through the Leo Rodgers Foundation.

In this episode, we take Leo to visit Oatman, AZ, a town on the historic Route 66, where the weather is hot, the roads are windy, and the donkeys are the citizens. Buckle-up buckaroos, you’re in for a Wild West Adventure!”

Moksha Patam: Snakes and Ladders – Flashpacking Through the Tasmanian Mountains

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Moksha Patam: Snakes and Ladders – Flashpacking Through the Tasmanian Mountains

Moksha Patam is a game based on traditional Hindu philosophy. It was designed to teach players the Hindu concepts of Karma and Kama: virtue and desire. The virtues of generosity, faith, and humility are the ladders that carry you up the board, upwards towards enlightenment and to the end of the game. But if you follow the path of vices—lust, anger, murder, and theft—the snakes will pull you back to the beginning of the game. Up and down. Enlightenment and rebirth. Making it to your destination or being pulled back to the start.

Curtis Inglis’ Titanium Retrotec with ENVE Foundation AG25 Gravel Wheels

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Curtis Inglis’ Titanium Retrotec with ENVE Foundation AG25 Gravel Wheels

I don’t know about you all but personally, I miss seeing off-the-wall crazy custom bikes at the various tradeshows. With the pandemic canceling the 2020 and most likely 2021 dates for various open houses and NAHBS, I’ve just accepted the fact that those balleur bicycle gallery shoots will have to wait. That said, when projects like this fall into my lap, I’m more than excited to take some extra time documenting them.

ENVE launched their Foundation Gravel wheels last week and in a perfect world, a press-camp was supposed to happen in Arizona to test out those wheels. ENVE planned on pinging various builders to fabricate the chassis for their full gravel lineup. One of those builders was Retrotec and Curtis went overboard for the event, building a handful of titanium frames alongside Oscar Camarena of Simple Bike Company. When the press camp wasn’t happening, Curtis decided he’d send this bike out for me to document. He needed photos for his website and I won’t say no to content like this…