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New Mexico Magazine pinged Albuquerque-based photographer Evan Green to travel down to Las Cruces and chase Hayley Clifford and Matt Mason out on the Monumental Loop for a feature-length article entitled “Monumental Effort“. It’s now online and free to read for all (as media should be) so be sure to hop over and check it out!
We just featured the boundary-pushing Full Enjoy from MONē Bikes in Monday’s gallery of unique builds from this year’s Sedona Mountain Bike Festival. Then, not twenty-four hours later, Cjell announced that his new El Pebblito gravel framesets were available for sale.
Read on for more!
Ryan Duzer’s second episode from the Monumental Loop is live on his YouTube channel. Watch it here for a look at this beautiful terrain and some dusty cyclotourits!
Our friends at Silver Stallion have a fundraiser going on right now with People for Bikes and Ride Spot:
“In celebration of Native American Heritage Month, we pledged to donate $10 for each of the first 500 riders who completed a Ride for Gratitude Challenge to Silver Stallion Bicycle and Coffee Works. Thanks to your outstanding participation, we hit our goal in the first week! With half of November still to go, our friends at SRAM generously offered to match our $5,000 donation if we can get 200 riders to ride 100 miles by the end of the month! That’s 100 miles total, not all at once. Silver Stallion is a small nonprofit bicycle recyclery based in Gallup, NM, serving Dinétah (the Navajo Nation) and the surrounding communities with a mission to empower and develop youth and young adult vocational skills in the bicycle repair and specialty coffee industries.”
Find out how you can help out at People for Bikes!
Buckhorn Bags‘ new panniers, which we reviewed and then took on the Dangerbird immediately following that review, are now available for pre-order for a December delivery. These waxed canvas, minimal but tough panniers retail for $295 and can be ordered today in limited quantities. Read our review first and then head on over to Buckhorn for ordering…
There’s a window of opportunity in the high country, albeit a small one, wherein the aspen leaves transform from their jade green scales to a deep gold opalescence, and with each wind gust, the overhead canopy flickers like an evening gown. When this window opens, we flock to the Taos Valley to ride two of New Mexico’s true gems: the South Boundary Trail and Heaven on Earth…
Ryan Duzer was in Las Cruces for the Monumental Loop Dangerbird last weekend and has a few videos showcasing the event. Here’s part one for you to enjoy today!
These days, it’s hard to set your bike brand apart from others within a specific niche but if there’s one thing Cjell has achieved with his brand, Moné Bikes, it’s just that. Moné frames are instantly recognizable with their large, bountiful brass beds of fillet brazing, unique tubing bends, intricate and ingenious singlespeed-friendly dropout designs, and yeah, rat rod aesthetics. Cjell and I have met before, albeit briefly, but at last weekend’s Dangerbird event, we got to spend a lot of time on the bike with each other, which helped me gain an even deeper appreciation for the brand, the bikes, and the man who designs and even builds some of them.
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…
Last week, Dillen from Baphomet Bicycles compiled a list of everyone that bought a Ride Group bracelet and used a randomizer application to select one lucky person to be the new owner of that snazzy SSMTB. Well, Matt bought a single ticket and ended up winning the bike! Dillen was already coming to Matt’s house to stay for the NM Bikepacking Summit, so he hand-delivered the bike. After a quick ride, Matt decided he’d take the bike on the Dangerbird. That’s serendipity at its finest.
Thanks to Baphomet Bicycles and Ride Group for pulling this together. They raised over $9,000 for Ride Group! I’d like to thank everyone from The Radavist’s community who donated, including the makers who donated products for this bike: Paul Component, White Industries, Teravail, Revel, Buckhorn Bags, Farewell, and Doom Bars.
Expect some photos of this bike loaded down and dusty in our Dangerbird coverage tomorrow.
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!
Do you recall the Baphomet Bicycles we featured a couple of weeks ago? The one that’s a fundraiser bike for Ride Group? Well, Dillen is closing out the fundraiser in a few hours, so if you wanted to enter the raffle, head over to this post to read all about how you can win! But be quick, the raffle closes at 12 Noon MST!
This summer has been a torrent of visitors rolling through Santa Fe either on road trips or bike tours and this week, we had a full house with two guests spending the night before rolling south. Andy and Kevin are from the DC area and returned to New Mexico to travel south to Las Cruces over the next nine days. On their way out of town, I took some quick photos of their setups, fully loaded with water, their gear, and some extra pizza from our dinner the night before. I know how much people love to see bikes all rigged out, so check out some quick “Fully Loaded” detail photos below, along with a portrait shot with our other special guest this week…
“Golden Façade” is the tenth layout of the Radavist 2021 Calendar. It was shot with a Sony A9ii and the Tamron 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 di iii rxd lens outside of Taos, New Mexico.
“The New Mexico high country is a truly beautiful riding experience and the South Boundary Trail might be one of our favorite trails in the South West.”
For a high-res JPG, suitable for print and desktop wallpaper*, right-click and save link as – The Radavist 2021 – October. Please, this photo is for personal use only!
(*set background to white and center for optimal coverage)
The mobile background this month is also from the same tour. Click here to download October’s Mobile Wallpaper.
Remember that beautiful Rivendell we posted last year? That was when we first featured our buddy Nick from Send it Safely and this week, he just stocked his webshop up with new goods including stickers, hats, shirts, and more. Head on over to Send it Safely to check it all out.
Season changes mark a time for renewal, not only for the forest but for ourselves. Just when the long days and heat start to get to you, the temperature drops and a cool breath blows across the dry landscape. Here in Northern New Mexico, the skies change from a blue expanse with puff-ball clouds to gargantuan storms enveloping our peaks; the terminus of the great Rocky Mountains. Each morning our mountains have a cloud toupée and upon their dissipation, reveal a dusting of white snow.
On Saturday morning, bright and early, I dropped Bailey and Erik off at Cumbres Pass, on the Colorado/New Mexico border. These two are riding the length of New Mexico on the Continental Divide Trail, bypassing Wilderness areas along the way. Not many people have ridden the length of this segment of the CDT, as it traverses the most remote stretches of the New Mexico back country. I’m not sure how much these two will be updating their Instagram accounts along the way, but give them a follow if you’re into this kind of thing. Oh, and they’re riding it singlespeed (32x22t). Hopefully, we’ll have a story from them when they’re done.
Tailwinds and cold water, you two!
Check out their bikes in our Reportage Archives below…
We took a look at Baphomet Bicycles earlier this year and in that post, we discussed the ideology surrounding the iconography of this unique framebuilding operation, nestled in the mountain town of Taos, New Mexico. If you haven’t read that piece, you really should check it out first.
Yesterday I caught up with Dillen from Baphomet Bicycles, as he came to town to ride the BFL, an event Sincere Cycles throws each year, offering a classic 55 mile loop with over 10,000′ elevation gain and a “B” loop with 38 miles and 6,400′ elevation. Both take you deep into the Sangre de Cristo mountains at the terminus of the mighty Rocky Mountains. Doing either singlespeed is quite the undertaking!
Dillen finished this build right before the event and drove in from Taos for the day. We pedaled together briefly and then his chain exploded about 10 miles into the ride, sending him back down to town. Later in the day, we caught up to shoot his new 29er hardtail, aptly named the “Left Hand Path”, so let’s check it out in detail below!