The Radavist

A few years back, you might recall a story that Radavist author and contributor Kyle Kelley wrote, regarding a trip called the Steamboat Ralleye. There was even a video! 2015 seems like a long time ago, but that ride operates as a segue into this morning’s tale.

“Come to Colorado, see the aspens, ride a Moots to Fort Collins” pretty much sums up how I got to this point. An invite surfaced from Peter Discoe, the founder of the Ramble Ride, coinciding with my friends at Moots, to take on 220 miles between Steamboat and Fort Collins, Colorado, via steep and daunting mountain roads. We’ve covered the Ramble Rides extensively on the Radavist before, but I wanted to sink my teeth into some Colorado dirt before summer was over.

The Driftless
Photos and words by Kevin Sparrow

When people hear of the Midwest, they typically think of farmland and prairie. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa have a rich history of glaciation that smoothed out a lot of the land we typically think of and gouged out lakes and terrain. Southeastern Minnesota, northeastern Iowa and western Wisconsin and Northern Illinois, known as The Driftless Region, is a unique area virtually untouched by glacial sculpting. As a result, this landscape greatly contrasts what one would typically think of the Midwest. Its narrow valleys, high bluffs, forested hillsides and beautifully sculpted topography is a real treat for cyclists in the region.

High Fives and Apricot Handups: Cycling the Pamir Highway
Photos and words by Amy Jurries

I pulled into camp early that afternoon, tired from a dusty, bumpy day in the heat with a slipped derailleur cable that forced me to ride the rolling terrain using only a couple of gears. I plopped down in the shade and chugged some sun-baked water as I began to hear rumblings from the Dutch cyclists in our group. They referred to a large number of texts from loved ones back home frantically asking if they were OK.

“OK how?” I asked one of the riders.

“A bunch of cyclists have been murdered right up the road,” he replied. “I guess it’s all over the news in Holland.”

As further, horrific details of the terrorist attack came in sporadically throughout the evening, we all sat in shock. A car filled with five IS-sympathizers rammed into a group of seven Western cyclists just outside of Kulob, then attacked them all with knives. Four died: two from the US, one from Switzerland, and one from the Netherlands. This was not only a little “too close to home,” but also completely opposite the Tajikistan we had come to know and love the past two weeks cycling along the Pamir Highway. Not to mention quite a blow to Tajikistan’s recently declared “Year of Tourism.”

“I’m not tired, I’m just tired of the situation.”
Words by Cjell Monē and photos by Corbin Brady

Corbin’s family calls it ‘Going Nuclear’…It’s precisely the time when ol’ Hard Corbin stops enjoying the infinite riches of bikepacking and tells the world to ‘go, fuck itself.’ Two days of bike carrying and rationing food are a good recipe for a nuclear reaction.

Cass Gilbert over at bikepacking.com teamed up with a couple of nut-jobs living on an organic farm outside of Quito, the Dammer Brothers, to ride their bikes across Ecuador. I can’t tell you a lot about these guys other than between them they have 7 million bikepacking miles and their hobbies include lifting steel fatbikes over their heads.

SWOT and the North Cape 4000
Words by Erik Nohlin, photos by Beth Welliver

Editor’s note: this is a long piece, but I wanted to leave it mostly unedited to maintain Erik’s voice, and all are encouraged to ask Erik questions here, just 24 hours before he departs for the North Cape 4000. So feel free to ask away and hopefully he’ll have time to address any questions you might have!

Fuck.
Wednesday / July 11 2018 / 04.22 am / Orlando International Airport / T-16 days to NC4000
Dehydrated and wrecked after canceled flights and a week on the road hunting Tour de France in cars, being off the bike completely for eleven days while eating shitty gas station food. The longest ride I’ve ever done is two weeks away and I’m lacking the fitness I wish I had enough of to relax about it at this point. Gear is not dialed and there’s a lot of questions without known answers right now. I’ll use this piece as a checklist, trying to get some answers for myself and to give you a picture of what’s in my head right now as I write this on a plane from Orlando to San Francisco, but first some context and a SWOT, a thing I tend to do when shit’s about to hit the fan. When this is published in two weeks from now, we’ll be on our way to the start in the north Italian city of Arco on July 28th.

Tyler wanted to get a limited slip differential installed in his Volvo 142. The problem is, Tyler lives in Santa Cruz where he works for Santa Cruz Bicycles in the design department, and the Volvo experts were down in Long Beach. No one wants to drive from Santa Cruz to Los Angeles on the weekend, and the shop was closed then anyway, so what’s a dude with a slick Volvo to do? The genius of this whole ordeal was that Tyler, and David – two design department dudes at Santa Cruz Bicycles – were able to convince their bosses to let them ride the newest bike models down in Los Angeles, allowing Tyler’s car to get worked on while we shredded some of the area’s best trails. I’m sure it didn’t hurt to have me offer to show them around, ride the new bikes and obviously tell a story about the whole shindig. Sure, this is about the bikes, as much as it is about showing Tyler and David Los Angeles’ best trails in a condensed, two-day experience.

Playing host in Los Angeles is as much fun as it is hard work. Hard in the sense that these are my local trails that I ride quite frequently, so seeing the “new” in the familiar can be photographically challenging. Add to that, technically I’m injured. I found out right before the guys rolled into town that my pinky was indeed broken from a collision with a Prius’ side view mirror one day while I was riding home. That incident happened almost a month prior. Bummer for me, my bike control, and the potential to have a full-on shred fest, but I was so excited to ride the new 5010, so I sucked it up, taped my finger, and clipped in…

Editors Note: It was brought to my attention almost two years ago that my framing of Ariel’s encounter as a cultural exchange glossed over the history of systemic restriction of women’s access to reproductive health in Ecuador and Central/Southern American countries.  This  framing allowed the possibility for it to be construed that the family is responsible for their ignorance (cultural), rather than being victims of a cruel system meant to strip them of their rights (systemic).  Glossing over these conditions only perpetuates the erasure of the experiences of women, especially indigenous, in Ecuador.  For some context I suggest reading this article by The Nation from 2019 here.

The intent of the article was to decentralize my voice from the article and highlight Ariel’s experience. Nonetheless, the article lacked a purpose and context.  In an effort to do better I am adding this editor’s note to explain why the article is problematic.  I have no excuse for my lack of inaction for so long, I had a conversation about it two years ago and it got swept under the rug until the person who first brought it to my attention to me asked that I take action recently.  I acknowledge that it should not be someone else’s responsibility to ask me to take such action, I can only attempt to know better and do better in the future. 

I have donated the money I made from publishing this article to the Desafío Foundation.  They are based in Ecuador working to increase access to contraceptives and fighting for women’s reproductive rights.  You can read about their work here (in english) and donate here

Ecuador and Non-Baby Making Lovers
Words by Ariel Campbell Photos by Spencer Harding

I’ve been sitting on the photos from our stint on the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route last summer trying to figure out what to write about. My photos tell their own story, so in lieu of the usual route discussion and tales of arduous climbs, I wanted to open a platform for Ariel to speak of a personal encounter she felt like sharing. This was a rather personal and charged experience, one I was not present for nor photographed. While there has been plenty of discussion about privilege in visiting developing countries on bikes, I feel in Ariel’s instance there was an authentic opportunity to educate and have a cultural exchange. The little things in your pocket shouldn’t be taken for granted, they have the ability to affect how someone experiences the world… -Spencer

The 11K elevation was too much for my lowland and desert accustomed body, I struggled to acclimate. Towards the second half of our trip, I started experiencing altitude sickness to a crippling degree. It was difficult to ride or even walk my bike. Short of breath and extremely tired, altitude sickness got the best of me, which lead to our painful separation with Spencer.

Tucson to Kanza: a Long Ride to a Long Ride
Word and photos by Ultra Romance

Dirty Kanza: How does one prepare their mind, legs and undercarriage for a 200 mile “race?” How do you relaxation cycle ésport™ without relaxation? How does one saunter through the day, resting in the sun whenever the mood strikes, dine on expensive chocolate after a fine fine yogurt cupping at the local co-op, all whilst riding 200 miles in one go?? Can that even be kinda fun?

I suppose it depends on your Myers Briggs score divided by how many years you’ve spent in dental school. Dentists were all over the road scene, and as road has taken a major swan dive into a pile of 20c used rubbers (sounds dirty cuz it is), grav grinding (sounds dirty but only mildly) has become the future world arena for the well-to-do-sadistic. Dentists are sadists by nature, nothing against them, they just are. They drill and pull teeth outa screaming peoples faces all day. They love training for 200-mile races.

The Stagepoach 420
Words by Kyle Ng, photos by Kyle and John Blackwell

Editor’s Intro: Kyle from Outershell and his friend John Blackwell took on the fabled Stagecoach 400 route last winter, writing up a damn good ride Reportage with photos of this rugged trail. I included Kyle’s note at the bottom that John’s bike was stolen, so keep your eyes out for a 29+ Falconer! Also included are the Outer Shell products used here, in case you were wondering.

Day 1: Mid March 2018. Me, John Blackwell and Jason Silverek meetup in San Diego one morning to ride the Stagecoach 400 route, a 400-mile bikepacking race that was supposed to start the same day. We were starting in southern San Diego, at the midpoint of the route. The actual race starts and ends in Idyllwild. Unfortunately for us, the race start was delayed due to a big storm coming in and the prospects of precarious mud conditions. Our plan was to hightail it all the way to the desert, getting through the would-be muddiest sections outside of San Diego before the storm came. We were all hung over.

Nick has a few loves in his life. Sure, family comes first. Then probably his very successful business, Harvest Moon Cafe, a farm-to-table restaurant in Sonoma, with a specialty in meat. The two things that Nick relies on for entertainment, certainly piqued my interest when I first met him in Japan during the Chris King Gourmet Century. He’s been a mountain biker since the 90’s, taking on the trails surrounding Santa Fe, and racing bikes. Since moving to Sonoma, he’s been friends with neighboring builders Curtis Inglis and Jeremy Sycip.

One of the things I’ve learned while spending time on the road is going with your gut. When I found out Easter Jeep Safari conflicted with our time in Utah, I knew we’d have to find camping outside of Moab. A few locals told me that town was mobbed, forcing them to seek refuge in Green River while people from all over the United States arrived in the Jeep mecca to drive the trails and show-off on Potato Salad Hill. I was bummed out, since I had been looking forward to this trip for some time, but figured something new and hopefully better would arise.

That’s when it happened, in a serendipitous way, as it often does. At the Green River Rock and Mineral Festival, we were mistakenly lead to a zone called Klondike Bluffs to rock hound with the group. Turns out, our group was supposed to be rockhounding nearby, but not at the bluffs specifically. While there, I noted what appeared to be an extensive trail network nestled in the rocky outcroppings and rolling hills. This zone backs up against Arches National Park, so it had views as well. Not Moab views, but views nonetheless. There was also free dispersed camping and a pit toilet. We were there on a Saturday morning and it was packed, with mountain bikers of all sorts from families to guys with pads and full face helmets. It seemed that I found our zone.

Fruita, it’s the mountain bike mecca you’ve most certainly heard about before and it was the meet-up location for our group after our road trip to Green River. We had people coming in from Minneapolis, Philadelphia, Bozeman, Northern California, and Southern California so Fruita seemed like a good starting point.

Then some bad news hit. While I was in Green River, I met some people who had fled their home base of Moab due to the Easter Jeep Safari. Oh yeah, it was Easter Sunday! Each year, supposedly 100,000 Jeeps register for the event, overrunning the small town and its trails. With this news, I immediately realized camping at Kane Creek was most likely not going to be able to happen, especially over the weekend. All this was in the back of my mind as I drove from Green River to Fruita on that Sunday morning.

It had been a wild 48 hours at White Pocket in Northern Arizona. At one point, we turned to each other and expressed, rather reluctantly, that we didn’t think it could get any better on this trip. What we saw was a geologist’s dream site and as a photographer, I couldn’t have asked for a better backdrop for a full day’s worth of meandering and analysis. It seems the crescendo had come and gone. Or at least that was our perception. We made our way back to civilization, via a myriad of deep, sandy roads. In order to plan our next few legs of the trip, we needed strong coffee, food, and wifi.

In this zone, there’s only one place to go for such modern amenities; Kanab, Utah.

The Forgotten Pass of the Atacama
Photos and words by Ryan Wilson

The Atacama Desert can be an intimidating place when you look at it on paper. There’s a certain mystique in the cycle-touring world that comes with being labeled the driest place on Earth. The lack of water also means that populated settlements are rare, which makes the vast 128,000 square kilometers of salty, sandy, and rocky terrain seem all the more inhospitable to someone looking to pedal their way through.

To be honest, the prospect of having to carry more than a week’s worth of food along with 3+ days worth of water at any given time didn’t just seem like a logistical challenge in trying to over-stuff bags and strap things to places where they shouldn’t be strapped… It seemed wholly unappealing. Just the thought of watching those liters disappear while you keep your fingers crossed that the next potential water source actually exists was enough to make me wonder if it would even be worth the stress. Still, I’d heard enough praise about the solitude and beauty of the Puna de Atacama that I just couldn’t pass up the chance to see what the hype was all about.

Baja, BB
Words by Dinah Gumns, photos by Spencer Harding

Serena and I were sitting on the blacktop overlooking Dodger’s stadium and downtown L.A. after an evening ride, and somewhere around the middle of the half pint of Hornito’s 
“I wanna do the southern part of the Baja Divide but like… make it into a surf trip” fell out of my mouth. 

“Aw hell yeah. Let’s go.”
 “Ok.”

From mid-October to late December, our plans shifted almost weekly. Within two weeks of our start date, Serena and Spencer finally bought their tickets. 24 hours before we flew to Cabo, Serena’s bike and gear came in the mail. In every sense, it was a “fuck it, we’re doing it live” trip.

We jammed fingers and sliced open our feet before we even got on the road. We got our periods in the middle of the Sierra la Lagunas and only made it 35 miles in two days. We rode with 8ft surfboards from Todos Santos to San Pedrito and Cerritos to surf whitewater and 2-3 foot shin-slappers. We washed our menstrual cups in rather suspect water. We couch-surfed and almost wept when we ate vegetables. We “dumped ‘em out” at the ocean, a lot. We wound up in a kite-surf wasteland that was full of margarita bars and too much Jack Johnson playing everywhere. We took acid and played on cliffs and drank all of some sweet old folk’s tequila and smoked all of their weed. We pet so many dogs. We almost gained a horse, twice. We used our words and didn’t fight or hate each other at the end. We got sand fleas.

The desert. Mountain bikes. There are actually very few places where the two overlap both at any official or extensive capacity. Which is strange, seeing as how the sheer scale of the deserts in California can be lost while looking at a map. There has to be a trail network worth riding in there somewhere! It takes up so much of Southern California! In my experience, this scale is only decipherable after attempts to explore, document and traverse. Otherwise, you’re just looking at expansive land, with a few mountains scattered throughout.

There’s a lot that Southern California got wrong, but setting aside expanses of unadulterated high desert is one thing it got right. Riding bikes through said landscape, only to culminate in a city filled with big box architecture, sports cars and golf courses supplies the much-needed reflection to further appreciate these experiences.

That’s the Palm Canyon Epic; one big juxtaposition, or macro juxtaposition if you will. From Piñon, Juniper, Chaparral, and Sagebrush to Cholla, Agave, Barrel, and Beavertail, the flora and fauna you experience on this ride is unlike anything I’ve ridden before. I’m always on the lookout for desert experiences on the bicycle and let me tell you, the feeling you get while looking for a place, or a route to ride, is equivocal to the vastness experienced while actually there, pleasantly pedaling. Or hell, even pedaling in pain can be fun too. This route has it all.

Luckily, on this ride, there were eleven of us, making for a truly unique excursion into the wide openness that is the high desert.