The Radavist

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.

After three years in the making, Cycling UK and Natural Resources Wales launched Traws Eryri this summer, a new 200-kilometer bikepacking route that crosses Eryri National Park in North Wales. Among the first to ride it, Katherine Moore gives her verdict on the Welsh rough stuff.

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…

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.

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…

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.

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.”

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.

Ian Graber-Stiehl explores the current state of cycling in Northwest Arkansas, where Bikepacking Roots is working with the growing destination city of Fayetteville to establish six adventure routes that provide 750 miles of trails and pathways in the Ozarks. Does Oz live up to the marketing hype? Read on…