tag
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.
“Smokey” is the ninth layout of the Radavist 2021 Calendar. It was shot with a Sony A9ii and the Sony 70-200 f2.8 GM lens outside of Moab, Utah.
“After our San Juan Huts trip, we went to a favorite overlook to find the landscape altered by the smoke from the West American fires…”
For a high-res JPG, suitable for print and desktop wallpaper*, right-click and save link as – The Radavist 2021 – September. 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 September’s Mobile Wallpaper.
Kyle Klain pulled together a great 2-minute recap from our San Juan Huts trip, coinciding with today’s Reportage. Enjoy!
This week’s Readers’ Rides comes from Brett in Salt Lake City and his All-City Gorilla Monsoon flat bar bike, which he’s broken down in detail for us below. Read on for all the specs and insight into this unique build…
Nothing triggers the wanderlust quite like daydreaming about a springtime road trip to the desert while you’re still stuck in the endless throes of a long, cold winter. The real yearning sets in as you mindlessly scroll the Gram, where every post seems to somehow find a way to reference that thing that’s missing in your life. The real trick, of course, is to transcend all the daydreaming and the scrolling, to put an actual plan, with your actual friends, actually into motion. This past winter, as we began to see a tiny light at the end of the pandemic tunnel, convening a small group of friends in the Southern Utah desert felt like the best way to emerge from that long period of collective isolation. Our crew has a long history with the annual springtime trip to ride bikes in the desert, so finding a couple willing accomplices wouldn’t be too difficult, especially after the stay-home sacrifices we’d all made for so long. Like the faint glow of a distant lighthouse on the horizon, the revived annual desert trip became the beacon of hope and group adventures toward which we were all now pointing our bows.
We’ve got a few more galleries to go through from this weekend’s ENVE Builder Round Up and today we’re featuring the wonderful work of 22 Bicycle Co, Ritte, Speedvagen, Alliance, and Utah’s own, Salt Air. Enjoy!
Continuing on with our 2021 ENVE Builder Round Up coverage – we posted the first Gallery on Friday – today we’re featuring the show-stopping work of Prova Cycles, Naked Bicycles, 44 Bikes, Spooky, Retrotec, and Argonaut Cycles. Each of these builders brought something special to the showcase and a few raised the bar considerably in various ways. There’s a lot to go over here so let’s get to it!
After 2020, I wasn’t sure when I’d be back at events documenting bikes, races, and places. So far in 2021, things seem to be picking up steam and this weekend I found myself in Ogden, Utah at the ENVE Builder Round Up Open House and Grodeo gravel race…
Getting There
Here’s a sentence that’s sure to resonate: It’s been over a year since I booked a flight and the idea of taking a trip was just a little scary. The last time I’d flown was another bike trip with my partner Cameron and close friend Yuhnke. Our flight back from the Baja Divide had been delayed due to airport shutdowns on the dawn of the pandemic.
This Sunday is Mother’s Day and Wahoo Fitness celebrates this day with a video featuring Crystal Haggard and her son Forest.
Be sure to call your mother this weekend!
While you’re hopefully enjoying that beautiful Flaat Rod Reportage gallery, don’t miss Rodeo Labs’ recap of their Kokopelli Trail tour. See the full story at Rodeo Labs.
Remember our coverage from the ENVE Builder Round-Up in 2019? Well, after a year-long hiatus, it’s back!
ENVE’s Grodeo ride and Builder Round-Up weekend is set for June 25 & 26. It kicks off on Friday at ENVE HQ with the Builder Round-Up and Open House (a mini-NAHBS of sorts) with more than 30 of the most renowned custom builders displaying their latest works of art. Meet the builders with live music, food, drink, and the chance to test your skills on ENVE’s Ogden Trackline Gravel TT.
The Grodeo ride on Saturday takes inspiration from some of the ENVE crew’s favorite gravel events, and travels the dirt roads and trails that the G Series gravel products were developed on. The Wasatch Mountains that cast their shadow on the town of Ogden are not for the faint of heart; the route will cover 92 miles and 8,500 feet of climbing with Strava-times sections along the way. Less race, more adventure ride, share the day with friends new and old.
Although the Builder Round-Up is open to everyone, the Grodeo ride is limited to 200 riders. The full course will be announced in June. Registration opens May 1st at 8 AM MST and is expected to sell out. Details and sign-up info here: https://www.enve.com/grodeo/
This is the third part of an ongoing series:
Full Circle on the Grand Loop: Part II – The First Modern Bikepacking Race
Full Circle on the Grand Loop: Part I – Trail Visions Ahead of Their Time
Back in the late 2000s, I was a geology Ph.D. student at the University of Colorado and a devoted cyclocross racer. I got up early and did intervals in the dark before class and I raced around in little circles every weekend from September to December, chasing other skinsuit-clad guys hopping on and off their bikes for rather contrived reasons. I flew around the country to some of the biggest race weekends, chasing UCI points and top-20 finishes. I was infatuated with the sport until I rather abruptly became bored of those little circles.
Since we’re on a throwback kick these days, or at least it constantly feels like we’re perpetually embracing kooky old-school MTB bits, I thought you’d enjoy this video by Tannus Tires showcasing Krispy Baughman’s evolution of freeride in Utah…
While we understand the competitive nature of bikepacking races and fastest-known time attempts and records, we still love the chiller pace of bicycle touring and a different kind of FKT. Kody and company clearly set the record for the Funnest Known Time on the White Rim!
Check out a few stills from this video below.
This video documents a couple on a road tour through southwest Colorado and southern Utah in 1982. That’s prior to the internet, mobile phones, and GoPro. All images within were captured on Kodachrome slide film and were just recently scanned and uploaded to YouTube. Videos like this have all the bicycle touring vibes!
To make a sub $3,000 Ripley, Ibis moved to an aluminum chassis, with a few geometry tweaks to make for a short-travel trail bike. Check out their launch video for the new Ripley AF featuring Pat Smage and some glorious Utah singletrack.
Specs:
-29” Wheels⠀
-130mm front travel⠀
-120mm dw-link rear travel⠀
-2.6” tire clearance⠀
-Aluminum front and rear triangle⠀
-Available in four sizes S-XL, fits riders between 5’ and 6’6⠀
-Frame weight of 7.45 w/ shock⠀
-Complete builds starting at 30.5 lbs / 13.04 KG⠀
Remember all those wild Reportage reports from bikerafting in Colorado and Utah with Four Courners Guides we’ve posted over the years? Well, Doom and Lizzy have launched a fantastic project born from those endeavors and more:
“We launched the IndieGoGo Campaign December 21st (soft, unofficial for all our fans and followers). You can start pre-ordering the book now through January 29! What is The Bikeraft Guide? It’s a community multi-media storytelling project that will ultimately result in a comprehensive book on bikerafting. It will be the definitive guide on the sport, and includes a comprehensive history section, “The Pirates of Bikerafting” Anthology (a collection of stories from 15 of the world’s best bikerafters) and a how-to section, mostly by Steve “Doom” Fassbinder, but also including interviews with various experts. It will also have a safety section by the “packraft safety guy” and author of the Packraft Handbook, Luc Mehl, a repairs section by Alpacka Raft repairs manager, Ben Phillips, and a Positive Impact Ethos section contributed by Bikepacking Roots.
In addition, this project includes our new The Bikeraft Guide Podcast, and short films in the The Bikeraft Guide enewsletter, on the IndieGoGo Campaign page, on @TheBikeraftGuide Instagram page and on the Four Corners Guides blog.
Our goal with the IndieGoGo Campaign is to raise $20-$30K through pre-sales of the book and “Perks” donated by our sponsors. This will pay for printing, distribution, contributors and editing. We’re really relying on you – aspiring bikerafters and people who love great adventure stories – to help us make this dream a reality.”
Head to the IndieGoGo to support this project!
