2024 Mid-Atlantic Bikepacking Summit: Building Momentum on the East Coast

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2024 Mid-Atlantic Bikepacking Summit: Building Momentum on the East Coast

The 2024 Mid-Atlantic Bikepacking Summit brought together 100 participants over four days in the beautiful Laurel Highlands region of Western Pennsylvania. The event celebrated riding in beautiful landscapes, inclusive community building, and shared learning among backpackers of all levels. Read on below for a captivating summit recap from Bikepacking Roots Executive Director, Noelle Battle.

The New Familiar: Riding Wisconsin’s Tour de Nicolet Bikepacking Route

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The New Familiar: Riding Wisconsin’s Tour de Nicolet Bikepacking Route

Located in a commonly overlooked corner of the United States, there is a place with endless gravel roads and trails. A region with an incredibly vast network that can be linked through systems of singletrack and small towns. A land where flowing water and spring-fed lakes abound. With prime fall color promised, Josh Uhl makes a last-minute trip to the lesser-known ATB paradise that is Wisconsin to ride the 360-mile Tour de Nicolet and reconnect with the place he found bikes to begin with…

The Dust-Up: Bikepacking is Not Bike Touring No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed

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The Dust-Up: Bikepacking is Not Bike Touring No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed

Welcome to the second installment of The Dust-Up. This will be a semi-regular platform for Radavist editors and contributors to make bold, sometimes controversial claims about cycling. A way to challenge long-held assumptions that deserve a second look. Sometimes they will be global issues with important far-reaching consequences; other times, they will shed light on little nerdy corners of our world that don’t get enough attention. This week, John looks at a divisive topic through a historical lens to lay it all out in a column called: “Bike Touring is Not Bikepacking No Matter the Bags Used or Terrain Traversed.”

Read our latest edition of The Dust Up below…

Alone Together: The Big Lonely Bikepacking Adventure

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Alone Together: The Big Lonely Bikepacking Adventure

Sometimes we don’t understand our reasons for doing something until we’ve fully emerged. That was my lesson learned from waffling around the start and finish lines of The Big Lonely with a camera and disconcerted heart. What is this big and lonely thing that I speak of? Described in one word by the riders themselves: it’s “relentless”, “jarring”, “cold”, “delightful” – “resilience.” It’s “incomplete” and it’s “grueling”. It’s “epic”, “stoke” and “go.” For one rider it was “mom.” Most commonly though, it was described as “community” and I found this to be a curious notion. The dichotomous idea that a 350-mile self-supported ultra-endurance bikepacking race called The Big Lonely cultivated the word “community” more than any other is sort of like a metaphor for life and all the funny ways our experiences are everything at once.

Education Through Experiences: Bikepacking the Yellow Dirt Route onto Comb Ridge with Dzil Ta’ah Adventures

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Education Through Experiences: Bikepacking the Yellow Dirt Route onto Comb Ridge with Dzil Ta’ah Adventures

In the Navajo Nation town of Kayenta, Arizona, Jon Yazzie runs a guide company called Dzil Ta’ah Adventures. Its intent is to educate visitors on the history of the areas surrounding Kayenta through guided bike trips. This particular route is one he’s been working on for a while which parallels the mighty Comb Ridge before climbing the Sandstone Backbone via an old Mormon dugway, overlooking Kane Valley where the US government drilled into the Earth, uncovering uranium for the Manhattan Project. The result would send waves of radiation through the community for decades to come…

Reflections on the Border: Bikepacking the Wild West Route Part 02

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Reflections on the Border: Bikepacking the Wild West Route Part 02

The grass grows steadily, towering over us until we can no longer see the San Pedro Trail. My partner and I hadn’t seen anyone else that day and it was peacefully quiet. We can only hear the bees buzzing, ignoring our presence among the thicket of yellow flowers growing wildly across the trail. It was still early in the afternoon and we already had an eventful morning – dodging thorny bushes cutting both our arms and legs, navigating muddy streams covered with overgrown grass, surprising a few jackrabbits from their homes, and getting startled by two rattlesnakes lying across the gravel path.

“Is this your property?” Lessons Learned from Bikepacking the Wild West Route

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“Is this your property?” Lessons Learned from Bikepacking the Wild West Route

Today is a hot one in southern Idaho, 90 degrees and rising.  My partner, Skyler, and I are stopped for snacks under the few shaded bushes along a lonely dirt road.

We hear the tell-tale signs of a lonely car and a white-haired woman drive towards us.  She slows down to approach us cautiously. Her window rolls down as the car stops and from inside we hear “There isn’t a road that goes through there.”

Bikepacking Round Up

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Bikepacking Round Up

This looks like it’ll be right up YOUR alley!

“Like to ride bikes and sleep outside?
Us too lets hang out!

Bikepacking Roots is devoted to supporting the bikepacking community, and we want more folks involved. Join your fellow Bay Area bikepacking kooks to swap stories, share routes, and brainstorm ideas for what we would like to see happen in 2018.

Afterward, a few folks will be heading out for a lil s24o ride to Anthony Chabot for camping, continued conversation and seasonally appropriate beverages. BYO bike/gear/lights to the talk, we will head out right from Lucky Duck*

Bikepacking Roots is a new non-profit organization founded by long-time bikepackers with the mission of increasing the availability of and access to the bikepacking experience and the conservation of the landscapes through which we ride.

*The s24o is not an official ride/event. Ride at your own risk. Safety first. Blah blah blah…”

Check out the event’s details at Facebook!

Geology Through Bikepacking – Locke Hassett

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Geology Through Bikepacking – Locke Hassett

Geology Through Bikepacking
Photos and words by Locke Hassett

As humans, we seek exploration of new places and the lessons that such exploration may bring; self-discovery, physical challenge, humility, solitude, community, and unforgettable views to name a few. We refer to this as recreation, which comes from the term “to re-create”. These endeavors are valuable, perhaps necessary, to the self. But, if we only learn about ourselves, the amount that we can give back to the world that allows us the privilege to explore can be limited. Ever so often, we must explore for reasons beyond understanding and re-create ourselves. We must explore with intention and inquiry. If the intention is set to learn not only about ourselves but about the landscape; it’s natural history and current state, we just might be able to become stewards of its future.

The Geology through Bikepacking course offered at Prescott College explores the geology, geography, and ecology of the Colorado Plateau through 3 different bikepacking trips over the course of a month. This course provides an opportunity to learn about a landscape by traveling through it. It uses the bicycle as a means not only for recreation, but for education. This is the story.