Rider & Rig

Miles and Ben completed the Oregon Timber Trail earlier this month, and by the looks of it they both had their rigs dialed in for plenty of singletrack riding and the challenging hike-a-bike sections along the route. Read on to learn more about Ben’s Why Cycles S7, Miles’ Surly Karate Monkey, and their two-person Oregon Timber Trail packing list…

In our latest Rider and Rig, Skyler shows off his DaamBuilt No. 5 custom hardtail and digs deep into the nitty gritty of its angles, measurements, cable routing placement, and other intricate details that make it his near-perfect backcountry trail bikepacking rig…

The third annual BC Epic 1000 grand depart took off Saturday morning from Merritt, British Columbia. With the help of the riders, we’ve put together a list of over 60 rigs for you to drool over, plus a sneak peek behind the event and some thoughts on why it’s attracting so many riders from all over Canada and the US…

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…

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…