Rider & Rig

Continuing our 2018 Tour Divide week, here are the Rigs of The 2018 Tour Divide, featuring over 80 bikes with kit details and information about the riders…

We share a ride with Mathias Dammer, father, farmer, guide, and co-creator of both the Trans Ecuador Mountain Bike Route and Bolivia’s Mama Coca, a 500km traverse of the Cordillera Real. Mathias tells us how a successful outdoor career almost came to end after a terrifying climbing accident, reminisces over a MTB racing career that started at the age of seven, and shares his enthusiasm for his simple, reliable, and affordable steed, a Surly Krampus…

In this edition of Rider and Rig, we check out Nancy’s Surly ECR and her five-year-old son Sage’s Tout Terrain Streamliner, used on a two-week tour around the Baja Divide’s Cape Loop. Find out the differences between the previous 29+ model and the new 27.5+ version, and check out Sage’s awesome suspended trailer bike, complete with its own seatpack.

In our latest Rider and Rig, we caught up with Nate Shearer as he rode the New Mexico Off Road Runner and the Monumental Loop. Along the way, we talked front loading on his B+ Trek Sawyer, racing in the BMX Nationals, using bikes as a form of escape and identity, and abstract storytelling…

In part two of our Rider and Rig Blackborow double feature, we take a look at Brett Davis’ rig. With a custom set of Bedrock bags, this Blackborow was built for exploring the sand and snow around his homebase in Durango, Colorado.

On the eve of a weeklong winter bikepack, we catch up with musician and poet Ben Weaver as he preps his Salsa Blackborow. Ben’s no stranger to long, music-themed bike tours. We ask him how he uses his bicycle as a way of connecting with his audience and find out about his summer tour, celebrating 20 years of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route through riding and music…

With a Niner carbon fork and Ibis hoops, Logan dialed in his Salsa Timberjack Ti for ultralight adventure. Read why he picked this frame and a cast of components that includes a Shimano/Wolf Tooth wide-range 1x drivetrain, I9 hubs, and 29×2.6″ rubber for his dream bikepacking build…

We catch up with Australia-based Pepper Cook and her basketpacking Tumbleweed Prospector. Whilst cresting the mountain passes of Peru, we ask her about solo tours, what she’s been doing to get women cycling, bikepacking verses road touring, and braids…

The second coming of Virginia’s Salsa Deadwood was a last-minute scramble build finished the day before our flight to the Republic of Georgia. Fortunately, it couldn’t have turned out any better… or more comfortably. In this Rider and Rig we talk to Virginia about her style of bikepacking and how to stay comfortable on long tours… plus her full packlist.

Wondering what it takes to forgo the majority of your earthly possessions for two years and ride the length of South America? We caught up with San Francisco-based architect Brian Mulder and checked out his patinaed, battleworn Ventana el Gordo, complete with Rohloff Speedhub, Gates belt drive, and SON dynamo hub… We asked him what he learned after riding from Patagonia to Colombia, how his gear fared, and pressed him for a few highlights from his journey…

In our latest Rider and Rig, we admire Danish couple Kenneth and Marie’s beautifully crafted 29+ steel hardtails, made by framebuilder Ari Rosenzweig in Israel, for their dirt road journey across the Americas.

We talk to filmmaker Jay Ritchey about his 27.5+ Tumbleweed Prospector, the camera gear he carried on a recent tour of the Peru Divide, and find out about the rack and bikepacking bags he custom made to accommodate it.