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Assembly Required: Are Lugged Carbon Mountain Bikes Having a Moment?

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Assembly Required: Are Lugged Carbon Mountain Bikes Having a Moment?

No matter how innovative or controversial a given mountain bike technology may be, it’s usually just a means to an end. A way to add efficiency or capability. Sure, these technologies can often make for utterly spectacular rides. But bikes themselves—especially full-suspension bikes—rarely add any soul purely for soul’s sake.

That may be why we love to highlight bikes like the REEB SST, Chromag Darco, and, of course, the Starling Murmur. These bikes have esoteric quirks usually found only on hardtail, gravel, and town bikes. And they just happen to also offer utterly spectacular rides.

But when Travis Engel noticed function-first stalwarts, Pivot and Specialized suddenly teasing in-house experiments in lugged carbon fiber, he wondered if there might be a new search for soul afoot…

The Dust-Up: Most New Mountain Bikers Should Start on Full-Suspension Bikes

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The Dust-Up: Most New Mountain Bikers Should Start on Full-Suspension Bikes

In today’s installment of our ongoing opinion column, The Dust-Up, we bring you Travis Engel’s thesis on why full-suspension bikes offer the most inviting, user-friendly experience to people trying mountain bikes for the first time, and why the commonly held “hardtail-first” doctrine is flawed and outdated. Please read in full before commenting, but please comment.

Everyone’s Nice at Brother in the Wild Dorset

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Everyone’s Nice at Brother in the Wild Dorset

Petor Georgallou steals his sister away as a (reluctant) partner in crime to check out the Brother in the Wild Dorset, hosted by Brother Cycles. He’s pleased to find a “field full of weirdos” and a plethora of equally unique and odd bikes and, it turns out, everyone’s nice. Stick around near the end for a lengthy discussion on the merits and cost of silver brazing, and a sampling of the bikes that made an appearance.

Connecting Mexico’s Highest Volcanoes: An Adventure in Bikepacking and Alpinism

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Connecting Mexico’s Highest Volcanoes: An Adventure in Bikepacking and Alpinism

Sònia Colomo and Eloi Miquel packed up their bikes and left Catalunya in January 2022. They arrived in Latin American with the plan to pursue some of the best multi-day mountain biking routes around. But, after completing the 2,800km Baja Divide, a friend told them needed to check out some of the highest volcanoes in the country. And that’s where the adventure started—they decided the only thing to do was change course and link a few 4,000m and 5,000m peaks by bicycle. They knew the logistics wouldn’t be easy, but the draw of the mountains was too great to ignore. Read on for Sònia’s recap of their human-powered bikepacking and alpinism efforts to link four volcanoes.

Unicorns and Sparkles and Rainbows: Finding Joy through Art, Ecology, and Bikes

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Unicorns and Sparkles and Rainbows: Finding Joy through Art, Ecology, and Bikes

While earning, or enduring, her Ph.D in Environmental Life Sciences, Courtney Currier began spending more time on the bike as a way to further connect to the places she was studying, and as a way to just spend time outside during the very inside days of the pandemic. In a very real sense, her time on the bike was inspiring and she began making art again. Building up and custom painting a unicorn fixed gear commuter brought everything full circle! Below, as she plans for what comes next in life post-Ph.D, Courtney reflects on bikes and joy, along with Tobias Feltus’ overview of the build process.

Gravel in the Loops: Where the Wild Things Were

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Gravel in the Loops: Where the Wild Things Were

For Dylan Sherrard, riding a bicycle has provided equal parts community and escape. In his early years, the bike was the ultimate tool for expression, but as time goes by, the bicycle becomes a tool for exploring his relationship with self and a vehicle that leads him into a deep passion for photography. Read on for Dylan’s story about rediscovering his joy for riding, on humble dirt roads, a path that ultimately led him to pick up a camera.

A Tale of Two (Colorado) Trails: Lachlan Morton’s MTB Progression

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A Tale of Two (Colorado) Trails: Lachlan Morton’s MTB Progression

“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. 

Hotdogs and Mallets: The Eugene Bike Polo Club

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Hotdogs and Mallets: The Eugene Bike Polo Club

For years the words “Bike Polo” have elicited, in my silly little noggin, some sort of barbaric mosh pit of hardcore/anarchist/fixie-skidding/male-presenting jousters, bloody-fresh shinners and maybe getting whacked by one of those croquette things being swung around like a Morgenstern circa 1490. A fight to the death on bikes. I grew up dancing ballet and racing BMX, forging me timid of sports balls and physical contact sports, in general. I had this unfounded bias that bike polo was too edgy and savage; like something I’d not ever try because of my aversion to sports where another human might hit you with a ball, a mallet, or heaven forbid, their own sweaty soul-sack. I imagined a lot of brute force and all-out thrashing: Steel bike frames colliding in explosive fashion inside of a cartoon fight cloud, mallets and balls flying from all directions, and me in the center with time standing still, going full-on Neo (The Matrix, 1999 film) from the saddle in an act of self-preservation.

I was wrong.

Good Grief and Gravel: Emily Dillon’s Tribute to Her Late Father

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Good Grief and Gravel: Emily Dillon’s Tribute to Her Late Father

My Garmin reads 113 degrees. With smoke blowing into Idaho from the seemingly continuous California fires, the air quality index is almost double the temperature. A brown haze obscures the landscape. Soot mixes with dust and sweat forming a dry crust on my face. In the dirt, on either side of me, lay my two companions—my younger brother and my hardtail mountain bike, fully loaded with camping gear. Forty miles into a four hundred-mile unsupported mountain biking trip through the Idaho backcountry, we take reprieve in a sliver of shade.

“Classic Mike Dillon trip,” my brother mutters, his voice thick with melted trail mix. Mike Dillon is our dad. Mike Dillon died eight months ago.

I Learned to Fly… On A Mountain Bike: Wende Cragg Documents the Birth of Mountain Biking

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I Learned to Fly… On A Mountain Bike: Wende Cragg Documents the Birth of Mountain Biking

As a kid, I wanted to fly. Like Superman. The recurring dream never materialized but the fantasy took flight when I met the mountain bike. The history of the early mountain bike is often seen through the lens of a handful of guys who modified their old Schwinns back in the mid-1970s. However, as the lone woman participating in those early riding adventures, I snapped a few photographs along the way, capturing the age of innocence often associated with those seminal days. A small group of trailblazers, pioneering a new course of action riding these old relics, would soon change the future of cycling.

Swift Campout 2022: An Alpine Solstice Celebration

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Swift Campout 2022: An Alpine Solstice Celebration

For eight years running, around the time of the Summer Solstice, Swift Industries has put out a rallying cry for cyclo-touring enthusiasts the world-over to strap some bags to their bikes, head out for a couple days of pedaling and sleep on the ground. It’s a call to go out and have a memorable experience. The collective Swift Campout was this past weekend, but with some free time surrounding the actual Solstice, my partner Tony and I decided to ring in the best season for bikecamping a little early.

Sink Into the Earth: Lael Wilcox Rides the 827 Mile Arizona Trail

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Sink Into the Earth: Lael Wilcox Rides the 827 Mile Arizona Trail

On April 12, 2022, Lael Wilcox set out to ride the 827-mile Arizona Trail faster than anyone had before. She completed her ride in 9 days, 8 hours, and 23 minutes on April 21. This is her story.

Note: Lael’s time is not recognized by the AZT Race administration which prohibits media coverage. The current official records: Men’s – Nate Ginzton – 9:10:44; Women’s – Chase Edwards – 10:18:59

An Exercise in Agency: Hailey Moore Reflects After Her Ozark Gravel Doom Route ITT

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An Exercise in Agency: Hailey Moore Reflects After Her Ozark Gravel Doom Route ITT

My mom worries about me when I’m out riding my bike, for multiple days at a time, alone. By the way, I turned 30 in March. She says it’s not that she doesn’t trust me, it’s other people she’s worried about. And while she’s never outlined this explicitly, I’m sure the fact that I’m an only daughter—not an only son—also plays a role. But, to her credit, she’s getting more comfortable (or, better at hiding her discomfort) with the idea of me pursuing solo endeavors. This time around, when I called her from the car to let her know I was en route to the Ozarks to attempt an Individual Time Trial on the 380-mile Ozark Gravel Doom route, instead of a flat-lined, “…what?” I heard her pause, then—on the tail-end of an exhale—say, “Okay.”

Pedaling Through Trauma:  How Chase Edwards Set the 800-mile AZT Record While Healing from a Mental Health Crisis

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Pedaling Through Trauma: How Chase Edwards Set the 800-mile AZT Record While Healing from a Mental Health Crisis

Ahead of me, the Arizona Trail snaked into the forest, disappearing behind the shadow of ponderosa pines, and re-emerging in a stretch of marsh lit by a sliver of moon. I dismounted my bike and plunged off a muddy bank onto a log submerged in stagnant water. After seven scorching days racing through southern Arizona, this riparian zone on the rugged southeast flank of the Colorado Plateau offered a reprieve from the harsh Sonoran desert, but without the constant pricks and jolts from agave, cholla, and cat’s claw to center on, my mind wandered where I didn’t want it to go.

It was November 2nd, or maybe 3rd, depending on whether or not the clock had struck midnight yet. I didn’t care. This time last year, I was deep in the relentless clutches of psychosis, and moving my body outside, no matter the time of day, made wrangling with grief and humiliation easier.