The Radavist

Held in Omaruru, Namibia this past July, the Onguza Loskop Local is a weekend festival with “great food, drinks & friends, with a wee bit of cycling thrown in for good measure.” After deciding the event looked really lekker Cape Town locals Stan Engelbrecht and Donnet Dumas made the trip out and each rode the event in divergent fashions—Donnet on a borrowed too-small Giant, and Stan on his ill-advised fixed-gear with skinny tires—and share a joint account of their adventure…

There aren’t many modern bicycle brands that have a history quite as rich as Yeti, let alone a diehard cult following of collectors and fans for the early bikes. Coming into a steel F.R.O or Yeti Ultimate is usually enough to be considered a “Holy Grail” find for most. However, there is another bike in the early Yeti lineup that is so rare many will never see one in person and more modern followers of the brand may not know even exists. This is the story of an elusive Yeti Tree Frog…

Our friends at Ornot are celebrating their ten-year anniversary as an independent cycling apparel and accessory brand. As part of this milestone, founder Matt Quann penned a retrospective about his experience starting an apparel brand in a San Francisco garage, tracing a path through custom frames, hurdles with domestic manufacturing, and a ride where waffles were promised but not delivered. Continue reading below for more from Matt and keep your eyes peeled for some special giveaways along with this exciting occasion!

In the world of cross-country bikes, there’s a trend of pivots disappearing. Not the brand “Pivot,” but the actual pivots. Specialized heaved the Horst Link, Trek axed its ABP, and Santa Cruz vetoed the VPP. The idea is, at around 100-millimeters or so of travel, weight savings and stiffness take precedence over kinematics. But Pivot (the brand) stuck to their guns for the recently revamped Mach 4 SL cross-country bike. They tweaked their DW Link and refined their carbon layup, claiming better ride quality and a half-pound lighter frame. They sent their flagship build to Ryan LaBar in northern Michigan, and it seems he’s putting this bike on a pedestal, without even needing to put it on a podium.

Petor Georgallou recently built up a Brother Cycles Mr. Wooden alongside his buddy Neil. Below, Petor delves into piles of parts and decides on some unusual choices as the cornerstone of his build. Follow along for his musings on old bike parts, laughing with friends, and maybe even getting two whole bikes running for the price of one. 

Spencer takes us on a trip to Colorado to visit Winter Park’s local bag maker, San Util Design. Started as a one-man project, but ever on the up and up, the makers recently opened a new shop on the mountain town’s main drag and hired a few part-time employees. Boasting a range of products from hip packs all the way up to custom frame bags, San Util has some great handmade gear available. Let’s check it out below! 

Adam Sklar has been building custom bikes for close to a decade—and we’ve featured plenty of them on this site! But, in 2022 he decided to move production of a new model overseas to Taiwan. Dubbed the SuperSomething, this first production Sklar has road bike bones while still (subtly) paying homage to Adam’s mountain biking roots. Hailey Moore has been riding our signature Radavist edition SuperSomething all summer and, below, shares her review, along with insights into Adam’s design intent for this all-steel gravel bike.

No matter how innovative or controversial a given mountain bike technology may be, it’s usually just a means to an end. A way to add efficiency or capability. Sure, these technologies can often make for utterly spectacular rides. But bikes themselves—especially full-suspension bikes—rarely add any soul purely for soul’s sake.

That may be why we love to highlight bikes like the REEB SST, Chromag Darco, and, of course, the Starling Murmur. These bikes have esoteric quirks usually found only on hardtail, gravel, and town bikes. And they just happen to also offer utterly spectacular rides.

But when Travis Engel noticed function-first stalwarts, Pivot and Specialized suddenly teasing in-house experiments in lugged carbon fiber, he wondered if there might be a new search for soul afoot…

As cyclists, we love bikes that can do more than one thing. A Swiss Army knife rather than a scalpel, if you will. So when a bike like the Hudski Doggler passes through my possession, I want to find its limits and then push through them. I’ve spent a few months riding the Doggler around Santa Fe, in and around our beloved Santa Fe National Forest, and I’m ready to spill the beans on what makes this bike so appropriate for gravel and mountain riding…

On the cusp of this year’s MADE Bike show, we’re getting the hype train rolling early with a note from Aaron Stinner on the recent updates made to Stinner Frameworks’ mainstay hardtail, the Tunnel. Then we’ll take a look at three custom-finished Tunnels for three takes on this classic mid-travel 29er. 

We just covered the SB135, a Switch-Infinity-equipped, carbon fiber Yeti with just 15mm more rear travel than the SB120 that Travis Engel is here to talk about. But there’s very little danger of any overlap between the two bikes. The SB135 is one of the last mid-travel 27.5-inch bikes left in the wild, and that kinda dominates any conversation it’s in. The SB120, on the other hand, is a short-travel trail 29er: The compact crossover SUV of mountain bikes. Seems like every brand has at least one model that mixes trail-bike capability with cross-country speed. Pivot, Ibis, and Transition have a few perfect 10s on the board. Marin and Norco are strong players too, and they can do it for under $2,000 if you don’t need a carbon bike. But comparisons are always tricky thanks to Yeti’s unique design language around geometry, frame construction, and, of course, suspension. As with every Yeti, the SB120 is like nothing else in its category.