The Radavist

After first experiencing New Zealand‘s South Island during a life-altering thru-hike in 2015, Mckenzie Barney returns with a same-but-different journey in mind. This time astride her Kona Sutra LTD, Mckenzie reconnects with the familiar terrain through a new medium all while stitching together classic stretches of mixed-surface bike touring routes to cover the 1500km from Picton to Bluff.

The first time I laid eyes on a fat bike was in 2011. I was picking up my race bib for the American Birkebeiner 50K, the famed cross-country ski race in Hayward, Wisconsin. Surly had an expo booth outside with their demo fleet of fat bikes prominently positioned so they’d be the first thing you saw. You couldn’t miss the line-up of jumbo-rubbered Pugsleys kitted out with 26 x 3.8″ tires, ready for a test ride. I made my way to the booth and asked about these foreign looking monster bikes. I was promptly told that I should ride one and find out for myself. As I looked down the row, I saw one with much larger tires than all the rest. It was a Moonlander, there to show off Surly’s recently announced expedition fat bike.

Living off the bike brings a new level of attunement to product testing and during his tenure as a bikepacking nomad these past few years, Ryan Wilson has certainly vetted a lot of gear. Today he reviews Tailfin‘s Aeropack and Mini Panniers.

The Huracan 300 ain’t no trip to Disney World. Born from over 15 years of local land protection advocacy and route development, this 370+ mile bikepacking event showcases the finest, and sometimes forgotten, backcountry of central Florida. After making the voyage to the start line four times, Andy Karr writes about the routes’ rugged appeal and how it came to be.

If you’ve ever been on a bike tour, you know that sometimes the most challenging part isn’t necessarily the actual riding. Emma Jones finds answers for overcoming obstacles of bikepacking in Robert M. Pirsig’s classic, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, while taking on a two month trans-Europe tour. Beware of the Gumption Traps!

As a salute of solidarity to everyone who keeps getting out on the bike through winter, Hailey Moore shares three tales of off-season travails from riding through this most testing season.

This is part two of an in depth conversation between Tom Ritchey and Ryan le Garrec where Ryan seeks to identify key periods in Tom’s life alongside key people. Perhaps second only to Tom’s father, it seems that Jobst Brandt had significant influence of the young Tom. Below, Ryan shares excerpts from Tom’s side of their conversation that highlight Jobst’s character, his notorious rides, and his lasting impact. Enjoy!

Belén Castelló and Tristan Bogaard have made a life bikepacking around the world. On a trip to Italy last fall Belén’s brother, Horacio, decided to join the couple on a tour through the Dolomites. On the cusp of turning 40 and with little-to-no cycling experience, Horacio was looking for an experience that would shake him up, and wake him up from his normal routine. He found that while riding an e-bike for back-to-back days in the Dolomite Mountains. Read on for Belén’s recounting of the trip and why choosing e-bikes felt like the best choice for their ride.

Not everything goes how you imagine it will when you set out on a trip across the world. In my experience, the majority of the time it doesn’t. It was around three years ago, in February 2020, I was packing up some things in Kathmandu to hit the pause button on endlessly riding and head home for a couple of months to visit family after a long series of tours through southern Patagonia and Asia. I’d booked a round trip flight and left my trusty Tumbleweed Prospector behind in Nepal, with my plans set to return to the Himalayas in April of 2020 to make a route through India and the rugged peaks of Pakistan… But, as we all know, plans changed.

A couple of years later, as Nepal began loosening up its restrictions on tourism, I started eyeing my return to the Himalayas, to finally retrieve my bike and follow through with the riding plans I’d set into motion years before…

Tyler and Spencer stitched together a multisport overnight in the enigmatic Cochise Stronghold in Southern Arizona. The duo combined some of the best single and double-track riding, along with a squeeze through the popular Inner Passage, making one epic lap around this beautiful mountain range. Be careful if you’re claustrophobic because this gallery is tight!

Will Bender is a bicycle frame builder based in Fort Collins, CO. His custom frames run the gamut from all-road to gravel, touring, and modern hardtails. Last summer, Josh paid Will a visit to document his shop and learn about his background and approach to building bikes. While he was there, he enlisted Will to build the touring MTB of his dreams — a comfortable 29+ rig capable of carrying heavy loads and designed to harmonize with the Oddity Squid Fork made concurrently by another Fort Collins frame builder, Sean Burns. Continue reading below for the full rundown on this build…

Beach Club, the fun, not-so-serious bicycle brand started by Sean and Danny from Team Dream Team, seems to be getting more serious. An indicator is the new bike models coming out over the next few months, with the latest being the Gravioli disc gravel bike…

While steel full-suspension bikes are nothing new, there has been a resurgence in recent years with many small framebuilders making trail-ready, competent bikes that leave their genetic predecessors in the proverbial dust. When I first rode a Starling Murmur in 2019, I wasn’t prepared for how engaged I felt with the trail or the flex and movement the Murmur provided. If you like the feel of steel hardtails or gravel bikes, chances are you’ll vibe more with a steel full-suspension than a carbon model.

These bikes are incredibly niche (though you can find them being made in workshops worldwide), and they still feel like a product from a cottage industry, not an engineered machine. It wasn’t until I spent some time with the REEB Cycles SST that I felt like steel full suspension bikes had finally leaped into the next stage of their evolutionary process. Let’s take a look at the SST below.

“I wasn’t going back because I wanted to go dramatically faster but because I wanted to put myself in the same situations I was in three years before and be more comfortable. I knew that the only way to do that was to try to do it fast because that requires you to push yourself to a place where you are kind of on the edge of your capability. And every time I reached that limit this time, I was comfortable, in a way. I wasn’t stressed whereas every time I’d reach that point three years before I’d just crumble.”

In 2019, Lachlan Morton rode the Colorado Trail for the first time, starting in Durango and finishing three days and 22 hours later in Denver. He went back this summer, riding the trail in the opposite direction in three days and ten hours, and chopping nine hours off any other recorded time. However, after sitting down with the EF Education Easy-post athlete, it seems that speed was a byproduct of the feat, not the primary focus. Read on for a more detailed look behind the clock, from my conversation with Lachlan about how he went from surviving the CT in 2019 to establishing a new level on this iconic route this year. 

Ruta del Jefe is a weekend of adventure cycling, education, community, and advocacy that has taken place in the Sky Islands region of southern Arizona, which we’ve previously reported on here, here, and here. Beginning in 2024, the event will occur in Cuenca los Ojos, a protected landscape in Sonora, Mexico’s Sky Islands. Below, this two-part collaborative story (“The Watershed of the Springs” by Sarah Swallow and “La Aventura” by Daniel Zaid) details what’s next for Ruta del Jefe along with other recreational and educational opportunities in these borderlands. 

We were pedaling up a steep pitch on the dirt road where Emily Kachorek now resides in Patagonia, Arizona, when she leaned over and said “this is just my old ‘cross racing bike, not a gravel bike” and we chuckled together. Emily relocated to southern Arizona last year to reconnect with herself after leaving her career as a UCI professional cyclocross racer. As a co-founder of Squid Bikes, she’s raced this bike globally: China, Australia, and Japan. In its current build, this V2 Squidcross is very close to UCI-spec she raced between the ribbons and through the mud, sand, and off-camber chicanes, save for the tires.

During our time together in Patagonia, we had a lot of conversations about life, ‘cross, and this thing everyone calls “gravel.” Which prompted me to photograph her beloved steed and write about it here…

The Szepter is YT Industries‘ first foray into designing a gravel bike. But unlike other gravel frame designs that are subtly-tweaked road bikes, the Szepter shares more DNA with the German company’s line-up of trail bikes. After putting—and pushing—the Szepter through its paces on his local Los Angeles-area trails, below Travis Engel shares his review alongside some suggested adjustments to the stock build to get the most out of this gravity-focused gravel bike.