The Radavist

I’ve always considered The Radavist a resource for inspiring people to get outdoors. While we primarily cover cycling, my interests don’t stop there. Many of my favorite springtime activities surround the Colorado Plateau’s canyons and rivers; two places you cannot take a bike, or rather, including a bike in those activities seems unnecessary. I love bikerafting and incorporating a bicycle in lieu of a car for shuttling, but sometimes nothing beats a bipedal venture into those wild and vast places.

Walking in canyons is my detox from the sometimes stressful job of talking about, photographing, living, breathing, and eating bikes. It’s a tangential experience, but when you do enough, you quickly realize the best places in the American West, particularly Canyon Country, are only accessible by foot.

Last week Cari and I brought along our friends Jay and Carrie on a backpacking trip down the Paria River Canyon. Jay and Carrie had never been to the Colorado Plateau, much less in a canyon, and had never backpacked in the desert. Widening our friends’ perspectives has been a real joy being closer to these places living in Santa Fe, and the trip provided equal parts  beauty, tough terrain, and ideal weather.

In late April, Ryan le Garrec rode his bike from Madrid to the start of the Border Bash Aragon, a gravel camp in the Aragon region of Spain. The event is not a race but simply a way for riders interested in camaraderie and sharing big days to meet in a beautiful place. Along with stories about a few characters he met at the bash, Ryan shares words from the organizer on the event’s intent, and Ryan’s own perspective on these “non-race” events.

Last year John wrote briefly about his early impressions of the BERD spokes while piloting the Sour Bicycles Pasta Party. Due to mixing around bikes and wheels, he ended up handing them over to Kyle Klain to ride and review. After months of riding in and around Santa Fe as well as across southeast Utah during the Aquarius Huts Tour, Kyle has some thoughts to share on this unusual wheel-building option.

My friend Sinuhe Xavier and I have always been “out of context” friends. By that, I mean that we’ve only hung out at coffee shops or lunch spots until a few weeks ago. The contextual slip is that we’re both known for our photographic work in the backcountry. He’s well known in the moto and auto world as always doing shoots deep in remote areas of the American West, and I, too, love those “big country” vistas but with cycling.

When my plans for Sea Otter were shaping up, I dropped him a note, asking if he would be anywhere on the Colorado Plateau in the coming weeks. We hashed out a plan and sent each other options for a campsite meet-up. Precious GPS coordinates were shared, and we settled on a date. The road to Sea Otter had begun…

Washboard roads, rocky doubletrack, creosote, cacti, centipedes, tarantulas, and vistas for miles. The Monumental Loop provides it all in a healthy mix, featuring the Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, BLM, and state lands surrounding the town of Las Cruces, New Mexico. With the mighty Organ Mountains looming in the background, it’s hard to imagine a better touring or bikepacking route in Southern New Mexico. When you add in the delicious food on the route, you’ve got yourself a winning combination. To help celebrate this monumental achievement (tee hee), Matt Mason, co-founder of the Loop, throws a grand depart each year dubbed the Dangerbird which took a brief hiatus last year due to the Pandemic. With Covid protocols in place and our numbers remaining slightly elevated in New Mexico, Matt made sure the entire weekend’s events took place outdoors, so I felt safe to head down to experience this gem of the Chihuahuan Desert…

New Mexico has a lot of really amazing bicycle touring routes, from the mountainous aspen forests to the southern deserts. One such route is the Monumental Loop, which is based out of the Southern New Mexico city of Las Cruces, co-founded by Matt Mason. The Monumental Loop is a passion project for Matt but this year, he wanted to do something special to celebrate the cycling community in New Mexico. Part of that includes the first-ever New Mexico Bikepacking Summit. The weekend’s events included a Makers’ Mart at Outdoor Adventures, a local bike shop, and a grand depart for the Dangerbird, Matt’s nickname for the Monumental Loop. As you can imagine, after photographing the weekend’s events and touring the northern loop, I’m super zonked, so let’s get to it!