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.

While many of the sites and vistas here are fairly well known, we will not be providing names and furthering keywording the area for the Internets. We encourage you to find a Canyonlands map, a cup of tea, and a good reading lamp and enjoy letting your mind wander the nooks, grottos, bends, and spires on the map unfolded before you. 

In years past, we’ve often found ourselves meandering through the deserts of the Western United States. The Colorado, Mojave, Sonoran, and Great Basin all have provided ample inspiration to my tired body and mind. While many of these ecoregions feel familiar, by far the Chihuahuan is the most mysterious to me. It’s the one region we haven’t spent much time in and with our relocation to Santa Fe, I was looking forward to spending days meandering through the various public lands in southern New Mexico.

The Golden State Skyline is a human-powered, self-supported linkup of all fifteen 14,000’ peaks in California, stretching from Mt. Shasta in the Cascades to Mt. Langley, the southern tip of the Sierra. Along with my friends Jonny Morsicato and Charlie Firer, followed by film crew Colin Rex and Nick Smillie, I set off to complete the Golden State Skyline on August 14. Our planned route covered 800 miles by bike, 100 miles on foot, and 100,000 feet of vertical gain, including technical difficulties up to 5.9. But life had other plans…

Oh, what a difference a few thousand feet can make. In sharp contrast to the incredible lushness of the story we shared yesterday from our ride to Hāna, the surroundings at elevation in Haleakalā National Park are cold, stark, and windy – simply other-worldly.

As is usually the case with high elevation destinations, you really are at the mercy of the weather on Haleakalā. What was a picture-perfect Hawaiian day down at sea level and for most of the drive up the volcano took an about-face as soon as we dropped off the ridge into the Haleakalā crater. We reached for our insulated jackets and descended into the fog.

As you might imagine, my life can sometimes reach a tipping point when it comes to cycling. When I’m not on the road for events, I’m at my home, which happens to be above a bike shop. This means most of my spare time, when it exists, is spent fully immersed in bicycles. Come the end of the year, I’m usually ready for a break. Unfortunately, the last bit of wick has yet to burn. September brings about Interbike and suddenly, the cycling industry awakens. Suddenly my days are filled with phone calls, planning advertising and talking about press launches. While the rest of the world slows down towards the holiday season, my life intensifies. This year, I had plans to attend Eurobike, but then my girlfriend mentioned that her friends had won the lottery to hike the Subway in Zion National Park, Utah. For many outdoorsy people, the Subway is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Sure, you can always enter the lottery over and over again, but very few actually get to embark on this memorable hike. For instance, Cari’s friend had entered the lottery for four years before getting a permit.

I’ve learned something over the years. Balance. Work hard, relax hard. Shoot photos of bikes, shoot photos of nature. Ride a lot, hike a lot. When your hobby, passion and love is also your job, establishing this balance is of the utmost importance. So when NAHBS rolls around each year, I try to have an exit strategy…

So there we were, planning our drive to Las Vegas for Interbike when Andy throws out the idea “mates, let’s go to the Grand Canyon”, like it’s on the way or something. Personally, I’d rather spend a day or two riding in LA than on the road, so I schemed with Kyle on how to convince the Aussie that there are perfectly fine parks not as far out of the way.

Solution: Zion National Park. We’d drive straight through Vegas and head two hours east. Get there in time to swim and then go on a hike before camping that night. Simple enough. So we drove and landed in Zion with two hours of sunlight remaining. Our agenda: Angel’s Landing.

I had one roll of film left.

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Tools of the trade:
Leica M7 / Zeiss 28mm / Fuji Pro400H