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Tumbleweed Stargazer

Components

Notable Geometry

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McKenzie Barney, Filmmaker and Adventurer

Cycling the World Film

In Barney’s own words:

McKenzie Barney: Behind the Lens

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Boston to Cape Cod Loop

Portland to Brunswick, Maine, Coastal

Portland, Maine, to Newburyport, Massachusetts

Border to Boston

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But that was a few years ago. Diego is someone who requires time to mull over an adventure, to mentally prepare for it, whereas I am the antithesis — impulsive. Life, I’ve come to realize, is all about balance. I embrace adventure; he delves into technique. Thus, weʼve found the right match.

While traveling by bike is straightforward in terms of terrain, security, and technique, ski touring requires quite a lot of knowledge regarding each of them. Nevertheless, both of the sports have quite a lot in common. The main one? The adventure itself. Our initial experiment that intertwined these two pursuits granted us insights into our limits, appropriate gear, and the crucial considerations of timing, location, and terrain selection. We agreed we wanted to ride off-piste, loaded with camping and ski touring gear, with the goal of spending a few nights in the Spanish Pyrenees.

I still hadn’t gained as much confidence in skiing as I had in bikepacking — this was only my second year hitting the slopes — but Diego felt just the opposite. He has been skiing since he was a little kid, so we both tried to support each other in the sport where we had the most experience.

Our first multisport adventure came in January 2023. We took advantage of the mild winter Europe experienced during the 2022/23 season. It only snowed a few times, and even the ski resorts didn’t have much snow until mid-January, leaving large swaths of grass and gravel exposed and perfect for cycling. As the saying goes, darle la vuelta a la tortilla — “to turn the tables” — so we planned a cool, short adventure to conclude our Christmas holidays.

The snowfall we had in the Pyrenees wasn’t enough to cover the valleys, leaving only the higher peaks at around 6,550 feet blanketed in white. There was some snow, but we needed to be creative to find it. As Diego knows the Pyrenees like the back of his hand, he charted a route that intertwined gravel paths and ski touring. Rehearsal day finally arrived, and we were equally excited and nervous about facing our first gravel-skiing experience ever. During that day we learned a lot, not only about attaching the skis properly to a gravel bike but also about the limits of our bodies. After ascending 2,300 feet with fully loaded bikes, we left the bikes and the rest of the gear we did not need on the grass. We wore skis, boots, proper clothing, and a backpack with all the safety gear you need for ski touring plus some food and water. By midday, I was dehydrated and exhausted; it turns out combining these sports in the same day requires a lot of effort and great fitness and conditioning. As it was winter, days were short and we had to be aware of the natural light and conditions of the snow as it kept changing throughout the day.

Now that we’d done a successful test run, it was time to stretch out the adventure. This second experience felt much better than the first. The days were longer, our gear-packing skills were refined, and our confidence in both sports was growing. Easter was the perfect time to take some days off in a magical and remote corner of the Spanish Pyrenees: the weather was on our side with shiny days and the snow was still playful considering the little precipitation we had during the winter.

Preparations started days ahead, given the meticulous planning necessary. As time went by, we found ourselves loading gear next to the Bubal Dam in the stunning Tena Valley. Two fully loaded gravel bikes with food for four days, camping gear, and ski touring stuff set us up to have probably the most amazing days of the last winter. The first miles are always to get adapted to the weight and be mentally prepared for the adventure ahead. I felt excited, nervous, and intrigued, but somehow happiness was my main state. Our bikes wobbled under the load, passing cars with mutual respect during the first miles before we turned onto the gravel mountain trail. Once we left the asphalt, jackets were removed as the sun’s rays began to warm our skin. We had almost 3,000 feet of climbing ahead, promising breathtaking views and no urgency to reach the small open shelter we found on the map. Our fingers were crossed, hoping the shelter — which cannot be reserved — wasn’t already occupied. We carried our tent just in case.

The shadow during the first portion of the ascent helped us a lot by keeping us cool as we needed a longer warm-up to get adapted to the gravel path. As soon as we climbed, trees receded, the sun intensified, and the views got better. The lowlands were getting greener while the high peaks were still covered with snow. We did not yet see the peak and the area we wanted to ski tour, but we could make out some of the lifts from Panticosa ski resort. These days were the last of the season, and the slopes were surviving with the thinnest layer of snow I have ever seen in a resort. We continued cycling up, enjoying the views and how the scenery kept changing as we gained altitude. The first break came by midday when we found a cold, crystalline mountain stream, the ideal scene for lunch and a refreshing dip. Meanwhile, the sound of the marmots and the smell of the mountains created an ambience that reminded us that spring was just around the corner.

Intermittent downhill stretches provided respite for our legs and gave our eyes a chance to bathe in the beauty of the place. On one side, you could find the river and its steady sound by a big, green field almost ready to bloom; the other boasted brown and gray stone walls rising majestically. A cascade of snowcapped peaks, crowned with the mountain we sought, gradually emerged. At last, we could see our base camp for the following days in the distance. We got ready for the last stretch of our cycling adventure with big smiles on our faces.

The valley turned west on the following big slope. It required brief pushing due to steep terrain and sizable rocks. The path we followed zigzagged across challenges like sticky mud and snow-cloaked paths. We again pushed the bikes over the snow, leaving an even track on it. Screams of joy, wet feet, stunning views, and startled-looking marmots were all there was in the scene. I suppose we were some of the first human visitors that these marmots had seen this season. They seemed to wake up from their lethargy after the uncharacteristically dry winter because we saw them running around and hiding in their underground city when they noticed our presence.

At base camp — our refuge — we were greeted by more breathtaking vistas. A big granite and slate stone wall facing north by the cabin made us feel elfin. Although this open shelter served well as storage for our cycling and camping gear — keeping our fingers crossed for not having any issues as it remained open — we were eager to explore farther on skis. Originally aiming for Tendeñera Peak, we redirected to explore nearby slopes in order to avoid thin snow and long approach routes. We decided to go farther west and wear our skis directly from the hut the next day.

The first sunset and blue hour were as epic as the views, but our sleep that night was poor. Although we had winter sleeping gear, the hut retained the winter’s chill. It was nothing that the energy of first sun rays and a great breakfast couldn’t solve, and soon we were sliding skis over snow. A narrow snow ribbon expanded into a field of white as our progress continued.

Situated at 9,045 feet on the western fringes of Sierra Tendeñera, Peña Sabocos typified the robust relief of the western Pyrenees with tall limestone peaks on its northern side. The more we climbed, the more expansive our perception of the mountain and valley became. Although we also felt quite strong during the ascent, we still took a few breaks on the way. The flattest part of the ski tour came to an end with big-gradient slopes ahead. Choosing to be closer to the wall of the mountain not only forced us to trade our skis for crampons but also put us in shadow. We skirted these slopes by making diagonal walks until the time we reached the foot of the mountain, bathed once again in sunlight. The expansive views we had in front of us afforded a glimpse of the first two other people we would see on our adventure. They were on the ridge before the top, between the descent couloir and the final big climb. A quick snack before heading up gave us enough energy to conquer the first part of our Sabocos attempt.

Skis mounted once again, we reached the place where we would see these two guys later. An enormous granite wall lined up from the top to the following ridge, naturally drawing a half circle. As the sun moved, the great wall’s shadow gained ground again. Time to put on our jackets, enjoy the freezing breeze as well as some olives, a good sandwich, and some pieces of chocolate for dessert. We could not ask for more: great food with great views and a long slope ahead up to 8,980 feet. We could see the Tena Valley unfolding behind us, and the Sabocos and Asnos lakes twinkled below. The iconic Midi d’Ossau peak, Sierra de la Collarada, and the incredible panorama of Vignemale, Ordesa, and Monte Perdido were also within view. These sights made the last climb smoother.

Removing the skins from our skis and putting our jackets back on took us longer than the first descent. The preparation to ski took longer than the ski itself, and with the snow softened by the sun, we were able to enjoy our first downhill with cheers.

We knew that all types of snow would be waiting for us on the way down. We are used to it in the Pyrenees as we generally don’t get the best snow. We encountered ice and hard snow, requiring attentiveness on steep and narrow sections, especially for me. “There is no such thing as bad snow, only bad skiers” is an adage among skiers, and we were happy to pass the test.

The sun felt less strong than in the morning. We continued skiing until we reached our base camp where all our gear was waiting for us. We could see and feel how much snow had already melted within the last 10 or so hours. The river gave us clean water, the sun an amazing sunset. We finished the evening with some food, happy moods, tired bodies, and a peaceful sleep.

We decided to take a less intense third day as the gravel and skiing experience fully filled our souls during the first two. Our bodies felt exhausted and needed rest, so we decided to enjoy a couple of the snow blocks that were still near the refuge to do some short, fun descents. We walked up the grass and skied down in an exhilarating cycle. Tiny patches of snow had never been so fun!

Our final day of this great adventure took us all the way down to the valley floor on two wheels. We had 3,600 feet to descend back to the dam we started from. The heavy backpacks containing most of our ski gear limited our ability to enjoy the views while going downhill — if you’ve never cycled with a loaded pack, they seriously limit your ability to look upward while in the saddle — and the bumpy mountain road demanded most of our attention. A crash with all the extra gear strapped to us and our bikes would have been interesting. For example, we strapped our boots to our forks and skis to our bike frames. That’s why we stopped many times to take breaks and enjoy the scenery, giving our stiff arms a rest from hitting the brakes. The first slopes were the most challenging, as we had to adapt to the weight pushing us downhill. The mud in the first few miles didn’t help much, as the snow was melting quickly, and a few creeks made the path a bit more challenging. The empty valley surprised us in ways we loved. A crystal-clear river awaited us for another refreshing dip, and we bade farewell to the marmots as they watched us go.

A last-minute decision concluded our adventure ahead of schedule. Faced with two excellent options, we chose to close the ski season early and exchange more action for some good old-fashioned sentimentality — we shared a skiing day with a young family member who is improving his skills and will likely be a better skier than us in the very near future.

The Pyrenees have become our favorite playground, not only for winter but also for cycling in spring or autumn. This range is one of the most underestimated mountain ranges in Europe, not so much because of its natural features and rugged beauty but because Spain has long been promoted as the “Sun Country” of Europe, with pictures of beaches, great gastronomy, bars, and warm weather. Some parts of Spain indeed provide this weather all year round, but other parts like the Pyrenees offer very different landscapes, with glaciers, mountains, and raw nature. We chose the Tena Valley for the endless possibilities to blend bikepacking with ski touring that it offers. Many gravel roads lead to the snow level and are perfect for ditching bikes for skis. This is a reminder that a great adventure doesn’t need many days but rather some creativity and the right playground to ski and cycle on.

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Wilde Supertramp

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Southern Tier

Texas Hill Country Loop

Arkansas High Country Loop

Great Rivers South

TransAmerica Trail

Underground Railroad

• Stretch from Smithland, KY (totality 2:01 pm), on Section 2 to just west of Owensboro, KY (totality 2:03 pm), on Section 2
• Stretch from Xenia, OH (totality 3:11 pm), on Section 4 to London, OH (totality 3:12 pm), on Section 4
• Stretch from Worthington, OH (totality 3:12 pm), on Section 4 to Mt. Vernon, OH (totality 3:13 pm), on Section 4
• Stretch from Holmesville, OH (totality 3:14 pm), on Section 4 to Hamilton, Ontario (totality 3:09 pm), on Section 5
• Stretch from Everett, OH (totality 3:14 pm), on Detroit Alternate Section 1 to Toledo, OH (totality 3:13 pm), on Detroit Alternate Section 1

Eastern Express Connector

Northern Tier

Chicago to New York City

Lake Erie Connector

• Stretch of the Main Route between Ridgetown, Ontario (totality 3:15 pm) and Fort Erie, Ontario (totality 3:18 pm)
• Stretch of the Ferry Alternate A from Tilbury, Ontario (totality 3:15 pm) to Wheatley, Ontario (totality 3:14 pm)
• Entire Ferry Alternate B (Wheatly, Ontario to Morpeth, Ontario)
• Entire Ferry Alternate C (Wheatley, Ontario to Huron, OH)

Adirondack Park Loop

• Stretch of the Main Route from just north of Speculator, NY (totality 3:35 pm), to just north of Ticonderoga, NY (totality 3:26 pm)
• Entire Burlington Ferry Spur: Burlington, VT, to Port Henry, NY (totality for both 3:26 pm)

Green Mountains Loop

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The soggy clouds of August wrapped around black peaks like washrags around bad plumbing, the leaks oozing, dripping, spilling down as big puddles of glacial ice across the valley floor. Jon Underwood, a six-inch crescent wrench in hand, squatted on the aquamarine “sliprock” (hellbiking lingo for a glacier’s naked surface) and eyeballed the situation. At his feet a mountain bike lay crippled, the right pedal snapped off its crank.

“How far to the Denali Highway?” he asked.

Carl Tobin squinted into the distance. “Forty-five, fifty miles. Twenty miles of ice, then thirty miles of river.”

This was a guess. Aside from a shortage of spare pedals, we also lacked a map. Jon set the wrench down, picked up the pedal, turned it in his palm.

“Guess I should have switched both pedals back at Black Rapids.”

Three days earlier, he’d replaced the wobbly feeling left pedal at our resupply point, the Black Rapids Lodge on the Richardson Highway.

“How far back to the lodge?”

Again, we estimated. “Thirty-five, forty miles?”

Thirty-five miles that reached back over a glacier pass, through shin-deep snow, past crevasses, over unstable moraines, through bad brush, and across a river demanding multiple ferries of bikes, men, and gear in our single four-pound, five-foot packraft. This onerous list filled us with a fear of the known. The unknown via the Susitna Glacier didn’t seem so bad. The route was downhill, for example — always a bike tour bonus.

Bike tour? How about mountaineering expedition? Scrambling over the 30-mile Black Rapids Glacier, we had jumped a moulin stream — a vertical shaft in a glacier kept open by pouring water. Then at the pass, portaging bikes like pillories, we had roped up and trudged five miles through a crevassed snowfield, always wondering, “Clip-in to the bike? Unclip from the bike? Which way to best survive a crevasse fall?” Which way to rationalize an absurdity?

Over the years, we’ve developed a taxonomy for crevasses. Guppies are the smallest. A glacier traveler can bridge these tiny cracks with a size nine boot. Sharks bite extremities, usually a leg (or legs) to the waist. Injury may result but rarely death. Whales can swallow the unfortunate, possibly killing and consuming the body. Rippers are cavernous. A roped climber falling into one of these plunges downward, then pendulums into a distant wall as the rope rips through the ceiling.

How to rationalize an absurdity: walking past whales’ tails and swarms of sharks, loaded bikes cinched tightly around our necks, the snow-slogging portage over the pass had dragged on like a waking nightmare. Yet one day before, on a highway of sunny sliprock stretching from the terminal moraine (the accumulation of stones and debris deposited by the glacier at its toe) to the firn line (where previous years’ snow has been consolidated by thawing and refreezing but not yet been converted to ice), we had rolled — as in a dream — effortless and exhilarated.

Earlier signs had suggested retreat. Jon’s rear rack fell off the first day out of Mentasta at the eastern end of the Alaska Range. Carl inadvertently swam the glacial Chistochina River with his bike on the second day. And on the third day, I realized I’d forgotten the map. By the fifth day, we all saw that we had carried too little food: the leg of our journey that we’d hoped to pedal in six days might take 12. And there, high on the Susitna Glacier, we realized that we had carried too few tools, not enough parts, and no spare pedal.

We discussed abandoning our 250-mile, two-week mountain bike expedition through the glacial gut of the Alaska Range following the Denali Fault. Why had we pushed on this far anyway? Stubbornness? Stupidity?

Part of the “why” concerned bettering our previous 150-mile hellbike trip through the Wrangell-St. Elias from Nabesna to McCarthy. Some of it had to do with my own plans for an even bigger, full-length traverse of the Alaska Range. I would start with these 250 miles of mountain biking through the Hayes Range, then follow that with 450 miles of walking across the Denali and Lake Clark National Parks. For Jon the trip simply answered the query, “What’s next?” after Nabesna to McCarthy. As for Carl, a 2,000-foot avalanche ride down a north face had permanently subtracted nearly 90 degrees of motion from his knee. The accident had occurred in this very mountain range at the height of his climbing career. Hellbiking offered him a new medium to paint bold, defiant strokes across wild landscapes, to flip the finger at conventional wisdom’s button-down view of the possible.

Conventional wisdom viewed mountain bikes as alien to the Alaska Range, a view concerned less about the impact of rubber knobs on the environment than with the damned hard impact of the environment on riders, their bicycles, and, alas, their pedals. Conventionally wise people claimed bikes can’t be ridden on glacier ice, crevasses are treacherous, and big wilderness is too big for bikes. These people said, “Bicycles should stay on the road.”

We responded that creativity is the bastard child of the conventional: the art of adventure is what we do, and the science of adventure is what we prove.

Back at the broken pedal, I posed a hypothesis. “How ’bout Jon takes the raft and the paddle and goes out the Susitna alone, and we take the rest and head over to the Gillam?” The Gillam was the next glacier leg on our tour, several miles away over a 7,000-foot pass.

Jon, here on his first-ever glacier trip and second-ever wilderness trip, looking at 50 miles of raw wilderness over glaciers, rivers, and brush, with no map, no partner, and no right pedal, answered simply, “What’s the river like?”

“As I recall, it’s big, slow, and full of quicksand,” volunteered Carl, who’d floated it twice after climbing Mounts Deborah, Hess, and Hayes.

A swarm of crevasses, like sharks schooling from the depths, creased the snow up-glacier.

“Let’s get down to the moraine and talk about this,” I suggested.

In blowing rain, we mounted our bikes and began coasting down the glacier.

Sunny sliprock bears the same resemblance to icy winter roads of civilization that granite cliffs bear to concrete slabs: superficially similar but aesthetically distinct. Peppered in pebbles or dusted in loess, the ice often lays naked, its blue-, green-, or white-hued flesh pockmarked and rough-skinned. Sunshine revealed compressed ice as a wonderland of traction, an alpine version of Moab’s celebrated sandstone, with rolling basins, steep headwalls, and tight, narrow ridges. Like its Utah namesake, sliprock as a medium inspires the rider. The surface, anchored beneath spectacular mountain scenery, creates an extraordinary experience as cycling adventure.

Extraordinarily miserable, that is, in the rain, going downhill in gusty high winds, bikes laden with Patagonia pile, ice ax, packraft, and more food than we wanted to carry but less than we needed to eat. As usual, we had eschewed panniers, instead strapping loads onto a rear rack and half-filling our rucksacks with gear. This way we could shift the load depending on the balance of riding versus carrying in a fixed position no matter what each day offered. Unfortunately, as the corrugated ice dropped at 300 feet per mile, any load at all — backpack or bikepack — was unwelcome.

Soon we’d each spilled and bumped our butts sufficiently hard that slipping on foot instead of on studless tires seemed safer. Five tight-jawed miles later, chanting Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” (“I’m tense and nervous / And I can’t relax”), we embraced the medial moraine as an old friend — a friend we’d normally avoid.

Cold, wet, and miserable, we pitched camp in the lee of a Subaru-sized boulder, paving the floor and lower walls of our floorless, nylon pyramid tent — held up by our packraft paddle — with flagstones. Inside the airy blue tent, warmed by the cookstove’s heat, we kept the outer bleakness at bay and talked cold turkey.

Carl is a Himalayan veteran with radical first ascents in Alaska and Canada. Recently, he’d been kicking ass as a mountain bike racer. Together we’d shared a rope on rock, ice, and snow for more than a decade. Indeed, I had apprenticed much of my mountain wilderness experience under his tutelage. Consequently, when Carl spoke, Jon and I listened to our elder.

“I predict, if tomorrow’s like today, we’re not going up to Icy Pass and over to the Gillam. We’re all going down with you, Jon, out to the Denali Highway.”

I’d risked my life with, and even for, Carl. This provided me some veto power in response to proclamations like, We’re all going down and other statements of retreat.

My dreams of a full-range traverse were at risk here. Hundreds of miles of Alaska’s wildest terrain to fumble and fondle were slipping from my grasp. I wasn’t ready for this expedition to dissolve just yet.

“Hold on a minute,” I stammered. “Why not wait out the weather, like we would on an alpine climb? We know the ice is out of condition now, but with some sunshine — ”

“It’ll shape up into something rideable?” Jon laughed and clapped his hands together.

“Like on the Black Rapids? Best riding of the trip. But we only have one day. We don’t have enough food to wait out longer.”

The next day, the peaks were engulfed in storm. Jon puttered about the tent. I greased my hubs, bottom bracket, and headset. Carl took a break from the ’mid and searched for food that he and a climbing partner, David Cheesmond, had stashed after the first ascent of Mount Deborah’s east ridge six years earlier. Finding that food cache would’ve encouraged us with needed rations and a good omen.

But instead of clearing, the clouds slipped off the mountains and slid down to envelop us, aborting Carl’s search and soaking our already soggy spirits. We could stretch our food four more days, enough to finish the remaining 100 miles of our planned route, but only if the weather cleared.

The second night passed at our boulder-strewn camp, but the weather remained. Drizzle dripped from peak-clogging fog. We all knew what this meant: a Susitna bailout.

Nobody spoke. Victims of the conventional, we loaded gear into stuff sacks and backpacks and prepared for retreat.

“So, bikes don’t belong in the gut of the Alaska Range after all,” I mused to myself, disappointed that my Alaska Range traverse would have a hundred-mile gap in it.

Stuffing the ’mid, my disappointment erupted like a festering boil.

“Listen: I’m taking the rope, the axe, crampons, megamid, and stove and going over the pass anyway!” I said.

Carl answered in a heartbeat, “Not without me, you’re not.”

Jon’s face twisted wryly into a grin. “Guess that means I’m going, too.”

Unanimously, we asserted ourselves, full of empowered self-determination to prove again that in the science of adventure, egos outsize brains. We headed off up-glacier.

While the west-facing Susitna had offered all the traction of an inclined hockey rink, the south-facing glacier leading to Icy Pass surprised us with its traction. Equally remarkable, Carl discovered the Tobin-Cheesmond cache of peanuts and kippers. God does indeed smile on us mortals of simple mind.

Encouraged, we pedaled higher. Bare ice and rain gave way to névé and sleet, the wind increasing with altitude. At 7,000 feet, we dropped our bikes, punched into a whiteout, and followed our compass north to the col, scouting the route over the divide.

This was full-on stupid. I wore every stitch of clothing I’d brought, from pile pajamas to Capilene balaclava, all worn as armor against the cross fire in a battle of the air masses. There along the crest of the Alaska Range, a coastal low-pressure system struggled with an interior high for supremacy. Caught between combatants, we stumbled upward, three fools linked by 120 feet of five-millimeter Kevlar cord and the same mentality that sends dogs after porcupines again and again.

We reached the col, anchored our packs in the lee, then returned for our bikes. The wind twisted and jerked the bicycles on our backs as we stepped over the divide. An icy ramp led left, merging with a glacial bulge split by crevasses. We crept along, winding our way through a historical impasse recorded in David Roberts’s 1970 expedition classic, Deborah: A Wilderness Narrative.

Nearly 30 years earlier, a whale had swallowed Don Jensen, roped to Roberts for safety, then chewed him up and spit him out at Roberts’s urging. Two decades later, these crevasses again enforced retreat when a pair of experienced Fairbanks ski mountaineers balked at the maze.

Icy Pass had turned back both groups. We felt honored: the col let the bicycles pass.

Safe on the snow flats below, we looked back. The science of adventure had proven itself irrational: during a blizzard, 60 miles from any road or man-made trail, over a pass that repulsed experienced mountaineers, we’d crossed the glacial spine of the Alaska Range with mountain bikes. The idea of it made me sick.

We pedaled down-glacier, bunny-hopped a few guppies, but mostly bike-hiked through ankle-deep slush. Near midnight, we anchored the ’mid to a rocky moraine. The shelter barely survived a thrashing storm. With great relief, we exited the glacial system the next day. As Jon’s first experience with glaciers had stretched rather uncomfortably over a hundred miles and a week, he swore them off, if not forever, at least for a day.

Two days later, we nearly lost ourselves again high on ice in swirling clouds. Like the proverbial three blind men feeling an elephant, each of us massaged his memory of the map, and each arrived at different conclusions. Until this point, we’d followed glaciers and river valleys familiar from a dozen years of hiking, skiing, climbing, and floating. Now we stumbled around nearly lost on a question mark–shaped glacier, wondering not only where we were but where the hell we should go.

Finally, Carl said, “Let’s go back. We can head for Healy the way I walked out 12 years ago after Clif and I left the Gillam.”

“Can you remember the route, Carl?” I asked.

“Yeah, I think so. We go down the Little Delta, turn left to climb over a tundra plateau, then drop down to a small creek. I think it’s Buchanan Creek. We follow that upstream, climb the pass at its head, and drop down again. That should put us close to the Wood River.”

Down the Little Delta we went, turning left at Carl’s signal, humping our bikes over a tundra plateau, coasting down to the creek bottom below by milking all the elevation we could, gently bumping along the tundra. Then Carl indicated that we climb up to the pass above. We pushed, then portaged to the top, arriving in cloud. So far, so good.

Carl waited as peaks tore a hole in the weather. He took in what the view revealed, turned around, looked from whence we’d come, and looked ahead again. With a perfectly straight face, he announced, “Nope, this isn’t it. I’ve never been here before in my life.”

This was funny, hilarious even — an excellent joke.

“No really, Clif and I must have gone farther north before climbing up. It was 12 years ago.”

Off memory’s map, we pulled out the compass and aimed it over the pass: west. Thank God. Salvation. At least we weren’t lost. Sure, we didn’t know where we were, but that’s only half of being lost. The other half is not knowing where to proceed.

We knew where to proceed. We climbed into our saddles, pushed off, and pedaled into the fog, heading west.

Okay, so usually we carry maps. And we think about the maps we carry. We prefer the 1:250,000 scale USGS Alaska topos. These sheets show the big picture, the prominent landmarks needed in regions where no marked routes exist at all. Useful landmarks show up more clearly on the four-miles-to-the-inch quads than they do on the one-mile-to-the-inch maps, where the important contours sometimes get diluted in detail. Beside that, a 200-mile trip fits conveniently on two big maps, a lighter and more manageable load than 15 or 20 of the 1:63,360 scale.

The cabins shown on Alaskan topos, most mapped before I was born, usually no longer exist. Rarely does anyone own or permanently occupy those that do. Hunters and trappers maintain them for temporary use.

I confess that we sometimes find shelter in these crude cabins. We look for cabins on the map, and if we are near, we visit, sometimes meeting extraordinary people. But wandering around half-lost on the north side of the Alaska Range, my mind grappled with the irony of looking for a cabin to find a map.

Of course, we did find a cabin with a map inside it and then located the cabin on the map in a weird sort of wilderness recursion. We were right where we wanted to be. Carl couldn’t have done better if his memory had been cartographic.

We even found a lodge where the master hunting guide within, Lynn Castle, insisted we lay down our bikes and explain how in the hell we’d made it 200 miles through the Alaskan bush on bicycles. “Those things got motors?” he asked. Then we feasted with him, bathed in a sauna, slept in beds, feasted again, and in the morning rode on.

Lynn promised the final 30 miles would pass in six hours. It took 12, much of it in a dry creek bed with pool drop architecture. The creek bed exhilarated me but depressed poor, pedal-stub Jon. Until then, where stand-up balance was crucial, Jon had kept up admirably, toeing the pedal’s inch-long axle stub the 100 miles since breaking it. The inconvenience — compounded by a blown transmission in the Wood River valley when a stick in the spokes snapped a derailer — slowed Jon little on our route of gravel river bars, wild animal trails, and firm downhill tundra. But the look on his face said it was getting old, and the hole wearing at the toe of his shoe said likewise.

We arrived in Healy at a Parks Highway roadhouse, just north of Denali National Park, late in the evening of our 14th day. Stinky, beat, and happy, we gulped two full meals apiece in an hour.

Sitting there with a belly full of greasy goodness, I appraised the value of persistence. We’d endured daily rain, skimpy rations, broken bikes, self-doubts. We’d crossed big rivers, bigger glaciers, the biggest mountain range in Alaska. Our mechanisms for success? Jon’s enthusiasm and Carl’s wisdom keeping us rolling confidently on wheels well lubed with humor.

By trip’s end, we claimed again: “Our mission? To boldly bike where none have biked before!”

Or, likely, would ever again.

A professor of mathematics and biology at Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage, Dial has written two books: Packrafting! An Introduction and How-to Guide (Beartooth Mountain Press, 2007) and The Adventurer’s Son (William Morrow, 2020).

This story originally appeared in Wheels on Ice: Stories of Cycling in Alaska (edited by Jessica Cherry and Frank Soos; University of Nebraska Press, 2022). Reprinted with permission.

The post Hellbikes on Ice appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Black Mountain Cycles: they’re simple and affordable steel bicycles designed by owner Mike Varley and produced in small batches overseas. After reviewing an MCD way back in the July 2019 issue, I purchased a Road+ frame that I turned into my beloved do-anything fender/basket bike. Since then, both the MCD and the Road+ have been discontinued and replaced by the Mod Zero. In addition to the Mod Zero and the rim brake Monster Cross, Black Mountain Cycles also offers La Cabra, “the goat.”

La Cabra is a dropbar mountain bike that blends the best aspects of old-school design elements with a few modern touches. The 4130 chromoly tubing is on the skinny side, the head tube is straight 1 1/8in., and the brake mounts are international standard (IS), all of which seem positively vintage these days. On the other hand, the frame has internal routing for a dropper seatpost, Boost hub spacing and thru-axles for modern wheels, and is designed around a wide-range 1x drivetrain (though it can accommodate 2x). To my eye, La Cabra looks like the original Salsa Fargo updated for the modern world.

The fork is non-suspension-corrected and is a work of functional art with a segmented crown, hooded dropouts, and all the braze-ons you could possibly need for fenders, racks, cargo cages, and dynamo lights. The frame has rear rack and fender mounts, triple mounts on the underside of the down tube, and room for two bottles inside the triangle on the three smaller sizes and three bottles on the two largest sizes. La Cabra can fit 27.5in. tires up to 2.8in. wide or 29in. tires up to 2.3in. It was designed around dropbars, but you can fit a flat handlebar if that’s more your speed.

Varley, who also runs the Black Mountain Cycles shop in Point Reyes Station, California, offers La Cabra as a frameset for $1,195 or as a complete in a few different builds. My test bike arrived in the Shimano kit with 27.5in. wheels, 2.6in. Vittoria Mezcal tires, and a dropper post. The drivetrain consisted of Shimano GRX levers mated to a Wolf Tooth Tanpan adapter in order to shift an XT derailer across an 11-speed Deore 11–51T cassette, with a 30T chainring on an XT crank. It’s a bit of a mishmash and doesn’t make for the crispest shifting, but it works well enough and has a nice, broad gear range for loaded riding. With the 1x GRX shifters, the left lever actuates the 125mm KS Lev Integra dropper post, which is the most effective and ergonomic solution I’ve come across yet for mating a dropper to a dropbar setup.

As with all his complete builds, Varley assembled the wheels himself, lacing DT Swiss 350 hubs to WTB’s KOM Tough i35 rims. It’s a bomber wheelset that proved to be flawless during my test period. Mounted tubeless to the rims were Vittoria’s Mezcal tires. It was my first experience with this Italian tire brand, and the Mezcals were fast-rolling and plenty grippy on trails. Riding the bike hard with pressure in the mid-teens, the tires suffered no punctures or tears. I’ve now got the Mezcals on my list of great tires for bikepacking.

For touchpoints, Varley installed a Salsa Cowchipper bar and a WTB Volt saddle. I swapped out the Volt for my preferred Brooks Cambium C17, and while I generally prefer bars with less flare than the Cowchipper, I found it suited the bike quite well. I also liked the 460mm width — plenty wide enough to fit a big handlebar bag and provide leverage for trail riding without being so wide as to feel inefficient when putting down the miles.

La Cabra is part of a resurgence in dropbar mountain bikes in recent years, joining the likes of the Tumbleweed Stargazer and the Surly Grappler, among others. But whereas many of those bikes take cues from the evolution of mountain bike geometry, with slacker head angles and longer reaches, the geo of La Cabra seems downright ordinary, almost old-fashioned. But don’t let the numbers fool you; La Cabra is a mountain bike through and through.

My first few rides with La Cabra took place on local singletrack trails in the foothills, with steep, punchy climbs, fast descents, and the usual loose-over-hard trail surface that leaves you wanting for traction. I ride these trails with gravel and mountain bikes alike, but I’ll approach my ride differently depending on the rig — if I’m on a dropbar bike, I’m mostly staying in the saddle and trying to keep it rubber-side down. Such was my initial approach on La Cabra, the curly bar misleading me into thinking it would ride more like a gravel bike.

The first indication of my wrong-headedness came when the trail pitched up. I spend most of my time on the hoods when riding dropbar bikes, but the stack height is so high on La Cabra that as soon as the grade went up, I felt much more comfortable with my hands in the drops. Now that I was in the hooks climbing a steep pitch, it felt natural to stand out of the saddle and give it a little gas, and that’s when it hit me: this thing wants to go.

What struck me years ago about the MCD was just how lively it was, and now it was clear that Varley had managed to instill La Cabra with that same ephemeral quality.

At the top of the climb, I turned around, lowered the dropper post, and proceeded to confirm that, yes, La Cabra is a dang mountain bike. I had never ridden a dropbar bike so fast on singletrack, nor while hooting and hollering and … wait for it … hitting jumps(!). Granted they were little baby jumps, which are the only kind of jumps I do anyway, but my point stands: what I thought was going to be a beast-of-burden type of bikepacking rig, intended for churning through the miles on some distant dirt road, turned out to be, in fact, one of the funnest mountain bikes I’ve ever dropped my heels on. I was leaning into corners, sprinting out of the saddle, and generally riding La Cabra like a wild dog runs down a jackrabbit.

And yet, La Cabra is also a fine bikepacking rig. Last summer, I loaded it up for a three-day loop on dirt roads in Nevada (see “The Middle of Nowhere is in Eastern Nevada,” November/December 2023), and it was the perfect companion for a long weekend of self-supported riding on variable desert terrain. With a Rawland Rando rack supporting a Road Runner Jumbo Jammer bag in the front, an Oveja Negra framebag in the middle, a Tumbleweed T-Rack in the rear, and Outer Shell’s Pico Panniers on the fork, I was able to carry everything I needed to stay fed, hydrated, and sheltered in the high desert. I didn’t pack like a minimalist; I had a full tent, a folding chair, and lots of food — even when weighed down with extra water, La Cabra never felt slow or ungainly. It helped that its starting weight was a mere 27.6 pounds, which I consider pretty darn good for a steel bike with alloy wheels and components. And with that high stack, it made for a very comfortable place to pedal out the miles all day long.

I’m an unapologetic 29er fanboy, but I was curious about the 27.5 x 2.6in. setup, and I’m glad that it was included on my test bike. The smaller wheels spun up quickly and felt a little more eager to be whipped around corners compared to 29in., and I never felt like I needed the taller wheels for better rollover. Similarly, the fat 2.6in. rubber felt great on singletrack and worked a treat on the wide variety of road surfaces I encountered in Nevada. The big tires rolled right over rocks and potholes, and I was able to stay afloat on sandy tracks for longer than my riding partner, who was on 2.3in. tires, although I still managed to spin out in the really deep stuff. It’s not a fat bike, after all. If I were planning to ride a route that I knew was composed of smooth dirt roads and I intended to prioritize speed and efficiency, I would opt for 29in. wheels, but that’s the beauty of La Cabra: you could have a couple of wheelsets and swap between them depending on conditions.

I don’t have much to report from the complaint department. My test bike arrived with a rear brake that needed a bleed, which I quickly had done at my local shop, but I guess it didn’t take. During the Nevada trip, I noticed the issue get worse and worse; I would have to pump the lever several times to get the rear brake to work. Also, on rough, high-speed descents with the bike fully loaded, I noticed some weird handling characteristics, as if the bike were flexing too much under me and wandering a little. It was disconcerting, but it went away after I checked some speed. I confirmed with Varley that La Cabra is not an expedition bike; he designed it to ride best with “minimal to modest” loads, and really heavy loads might overwhelm it. So this probably isn’t the rig to carry your collection of cast-iron pans.

When I first saw pictures of Varley’s second run of La Cabra frames, I initially had misgivings about the color, Peanut Butter (Pantone 7511 if you’re curious). It grew on me over time, and when I finally saw it in person, I found I liked it quite a bit. While riding La Cabra, I noticed a nice bonus to the Peanut Butter paint: it hides dirt and mud very well, which makes it a great choice for a bikepacking bike!

My complete test bike came to the tune of $4,235, which is kinda pricey for a rigid steel bike, but it’s a needs-nothing build that includes high-quality wheels laced up by the man himself. If I were buying one myself, I’m not sure I would change anything from the test build aside from swapping in a 32T chainring instead of the 30T (saddles don’t really count as they are so personal), but that’s a quibble.

In addition to the Shimano complete, Varley also offers a couple of SRAM dropbar builds with hydro or mechanical disc brakes, as well as a couple of flat bar builds that are quite a bit more affordable than the dropbar offerings. (Note that any complete build from Black Mountain Cycles includes handbuilt wheels.) The frameset price of $1,195 is on the higher end of frames produced in Taiwan, but I think it’s a fair number, and if you already have parts on-hand, buying the frameset can save you some coin in the long run.

I’ve reviewed a lot of great bikes over my years at Adventure Cyclist magazine, but only a few of them have really stood out as something special. One of them was that MCD, and La Cabra is another. It’s a perfect example of how a great bike is alchemy. No single factor explains it; instead, I can only point to the compliant frame, the magic of handbuilt wheels, and the geometry chosen by someone who has been designing bikes for decades. It all comes together to produce a bicycle that simply feels alive.

Black Mountain Cycles La Cabra

General

Best uses: Mountain biking, bikepacking, gravel riding

Price: $4,235 complete, as tested (frameset $1,195)

Weight: 27.6 lbs. (without pedals)

Available sizes: 15in., 16in., 18in., 20in., 22in.

Size tested: 18in.

Contact: blackmtncycles.com

Components

Frame: 4130 chromoly steel, rack and fender mounts, triple mounts on underside of down tube, two bottle mounts in front triangle

Fork: 4130 chromoly steel, rack and fender mounts, triple mounts

Tires: Vittoria Mezcal 27.5 x 2.6in., tubeless

Shifters: Shimano GRX 1x

Cassette: Shimano Deore 11spd, 11–51T

Brakes: Shimano RS785 hydraulic disc

Notable Geometry

Head tube angle: 70.5°

Reach: 385mm

Stack: 632mm

Seat tube length: 460mm

BB drop: 70mm

Head tube length: 175mm

Standover: 799mm

The post Road Test: Black Mountain Cycles La Cabra appeared first on Adventure Cycling Association.

It was only Day One, and we’d already found ourselves in a grim state of affairs. Our route had deteriorated from a pristine gravel road to a rarely traveled doubletrack with the occasional sandy patch to the scant path on which we now pushed our bikes. This trail might once have been passable on two wheels, but it appeared that runoff from this year’s massive snowpack had erased it from the face of the earth. We could occasionally hop on our bikes and pedal for 50, 60 feet, if we were lucky, but mostly we dragged our loaded rigs through fine sand several inches deep, and had been doing so for miles.

There was no alternate road, and turning around wasn’t an option. There wasn’t anything out there anyway, no salvation. We were in the actual middle of nowhere, in eastern Nevada, attempting a three-day circumnavigation of Great Basin National Park. We hadn’t seen a lot of people since leaving Ely that morning. We’d last seen another human — an older guy driving a bombed-out truck who pointed out a herd of elk to us on the side of the road — hours ago.

Evan and I hadn’t said a word to each other since we started pushing our bikes. We were in unspoken agreement that 1) we preferred to sit alone in our respective pain caves, and 2) it was entirely possible that we could be approaching real danger. There wasn’t any utility in complaining about the sand, or whining about how tired we were after riding for eight hours, or fretting about our diminishing water resources and the utter lack of the wet stuff along this part of the route. But as Evan pushed his bike onto supportable dirt and swung his leg over the top tube and got a few pedal strokes in, only to grunt in frustration as his rear tire fishtailed in the sand and he again hopped off the bike and dropped his head and began to push — and I followed the same pattern a few bike lengths behind him — he glanced back and we locked eyes for a moment, telepathically agreeing that our planned campsite, marked as Indian Springs on all the maps we’d consulted, absolutely had to have water. The light coming through the ponderosa was beginning to change; evening would soon be upon us.

As we topped out on the “road,” I felt a small wave of hope: we were done climbing, and the descent before us consisted not of sand but of loose rocks. It was rideable, at least. And despite the report of zero percent chance of storms we’d gotten from Evan’s satellite device, a few drops of rain kissed my cheek.

After crossing several more washed-out sections of road, we rounded a corner and came upon what could only have been a mirage. For hours we’d been riding through a brown and gray desert populated with pale, greenish-blue sagebrush, juniper trees, and ponderosa pine. Suddenly the landscape erupted in vivid, almost cartoonishly green shrubbery. It was like seeing color for the first time, and it was so shocking that it didn’t register with us at first. We split up to seek out water. I followed the road up a gradual ascent as Evan went the opposite direction. The road quickly turned to sand again. I pushed my bike for a few minutes before letting it fall to the ground and abandoning it. I figured I could cover more ground without it. After stepping off the road to look for any sign of a spring, I heard a shout. Turning around, I saw Evan on top of a boulder the size of a small bus, waving his arms and yelling excitedly. I quickly ran back to my bike and rode down to where I’d seen him. The road became engulfed in waist-high grasses and I rode through — was that mud? I came to a stop to call for Evan, and then I heard it: a babbling creek and buzzing insects. Water!

It was cold, clear, and plentiful. We filtered, filled our bottles, splashed our faces, and washed dirt from our arms and legs. Evan found a spot deep enough to shove his entire head into the creek; I followed suit thereafter, ignoring the two beetles mating on a nearby rock. Not a hundred feet from the creek was a perfect desert campsite: a flat-ish stretch of dirt enclosed by boulders and a few large juniper trees. We weren’t the first ones to camp here. In fact, we’d been following tire tracks from a single dirt bike for miles. That person must have camped here too. But no sign of pedal bikes. In fact, we didn’t see any other cyclists on our route at all, which isn’t surprising given how remote this area is. We might have been the first bikepackers at this campsite.

As the sun set behind the mountains, we could see the valley unfurl to the east and glimpse the road we’d tackle in the morning. Two parallel straight lines, a doubletrack road, jutted all the way to the horizon and would take us to the southern edge of Great Basin National Park. We hoped — prayed — that it would be rideable. If it consisted of deep, unsupportable sand? That was tomorrow’s problem. For now, we set up our tents and cooked our dinners, grateful to end the first day of our trip on a high note.

Ely is a town of about 4,000 people in the mountains of eastern Nevada. Founded as a stagecoach station on the Pony Express Route, the discovery of copper in 1906 led to rapid growth and, like so many other towns in the Mountain West, a series of booms and busts. Visitors can experience the town’s history at the Ely Renaissance Village, an open-air museum, and by admiring the many murals on the sides of buildings downtown.

Kyle Horvath, the director of tourism for White Pine County, Nevada, invited me to come check out Ely and experience the potential eastern Nevada has for bikepacking. Kyle has been mapping local routes on his own and hopes to put Ely on the map as a future bikepacking destination. He sent me a collection of GPX tracks he’d put together — some of which he’d put tire to dirt, some he hadn’t — and I pieced together a three-day route I began to informally call the Great Basin South Loop. We would start and finish in Ely and traverse an entertaining collection of desert ecosystems, climb a few mountain passes, and stop for a night in the tiny town of Baker for a dose of civilization. In short, I hoped to get a lot of bang for my buck in three days’ time.

Kyle had hoped to join me, but we both had busy summer schedules and our original plan of setting off in May was dashed by the stubborn snowpack. I didn’t want to be pushing my bike through enormous snowdrifts. I landed on the final week of June as the only week available, but Kyle would be out of town filming a local athlete in the Race Across America. Luckily, I found a buddy to come with me.

Not long after I moved to Salt Lake City in the summer of 2020, I met Evan on an overnighter set up by our local shop, Saturday Cycles. We were both military veterans (I was a grease monkey in the Marines; he worked on nuclear submarines in the Navy) and we became fast friends. It helped that we were both a little older than the others and rode at a similar pace. We spent the next few summers riding bikes in the summer and snowboarding in the winter, and after he completed his PhD in the spring of 2023, he was offered a job he couldn’t refuse: teaching electrical engineering at the University of Utah’s Asia Campus in Seoul, South Korea, for two years. It was obvious what had to happen next: a going-away bikepacking trip.

Thankfully, Day Two was mostly uneventful. We saw a herd of pronghorn and got our first glimpse of the snowy peaks of Great Basin National Park as we neared the tiny town of Baker, where we spent the night. Note to those looking to replicate our route: plan for a layover day in Baker.

Day Three was bound to be a doozy. Completing our loop back to Ely would see us crossing not one but two mountain ranges, the Snakes north of Baker and the Schells to the west. Luckily, we had an ace in the hole: if we got into trouble, we could summon help from Kyle via Evan’s Garmin satellite device. I for one wasn’t above asking for a ride if we really needed it.

Our first surprise came at the southern edge of the Snake Mountains as we forded our bikes across a healthy-looking creek. Not knowing what was in store, we stopped to remove our shoes and socks before the crossing and then took the time to clean and dry our feet before putting them back on. Within a few minutes of pedaling, we came to another creek crossing. And then another. Our route crossed Silver Creek over and over again, to the point that, to save time and effort, Evan decided to just get his shoes wet and I switched to sandals.

Up and up we labored, following the creek and riding through increasingly lush zones. As we gained elevation, we came upon bristlecone pine trees and wildflowers. Finally, the drainage we were following opened up into a convergence where the different forks of Silver Creek merged to form the body of water we’d spent all morning crossing. We were maybe a quarter of the way into our day’s mileage, and we could see that the road ahead was so steep we’d be pushing our bikes. Moreover, some weather was forming above Mt. Moriah to the north and looked to be heading our way. We had no time for equivocation.

There exist different flavors of bike pushing, and I’ll take hauling a loaded bike up a steep road on a firm dirt surface any day over heaving my rig through several inches of moon dust. Luckily, the pushing was over before we knew it, and the weather seemed to be holding off. We dropped over the ridge and followed a steep descent deep into a hot, dry canyon — the opposite of the zone we’d just left. There followed a long climb up a very consistent grade, so consistent as to drive you mad. The pitch never eased up to give us a break, but at least we found some level of distraction in the changing temperature and available wildflowers as we gained elevation. The lupine turned from blue to purplish as we gained the ridge.

As we found ourselves on a plateau with a view of the gorgeous Spring Valley to our west, we took the opportunity to have a break and check in with each other. It had been a long day: we’d climbed over 5,000 feet and still had another 30 miles and 3,000 feet to go before reaching Ely, and it was getting late. It was nearly 5:00 PM. Neither of us had a strong desire to roll into town in the dark, with all the restaurants closed (food being front of mind at this point in the journey), and finding a place to camp for the night and finishing the route the following day wasn’t ideal. We both had stuff to get home to, and sooner rather than later.

Another option we discussed was scrapping the last part of the route and riding pavement back to Ely. It would be a little quicker, but the thought of pedaling 30 miles on a high-speed, two-lane highway with no shoulder as the sun went down made me a little nauseous.

Finally, we agreed to swallow our collective pride and call for help. I actually had signal for once, so I messaged Kyle to let him know our situation and ask for a pickup. The last section of the route would have to wait for another time.

After confirming the message was sent, we geared up and began the harrowing descent into Spring Valley. Following Evan, it became immediately clear to me that this was going to be steep and fast. The road hooked around a quick S-bend abloom with flowers and then pitched straight down into the steepest road I have ever seen in my life. I was reminded of riding roller coasters as a kid — ratcheting slowly to the edge and, for a moment, hanging midair, my organs pressed against my ribcage, people on the ground like insects, and hearing vanishing screams from the seats in front of me before I too plummet to the earth. This wasn’t a road; it was a waterfall made of rocks and dirt; it was falling off the face of the planet.

I crashed. I went over the bars and landed ungracefully, but luck was on my side: other than a few scrapes, I was fine, and the bike came out unscathed. I’m not afraid to say I walked for a little bit after that until I could regain some courage.

Before long the road settled into a sane gradient, and we cruised out of the mountains and into the broad expanse of Spring Valley. Crepuscular rays broke through the clouds, highlighting the dust rising and dissipating from a vehicle in the distance. Before us lay verdant green fields and farmhouses, roads like a T-square, and the Schell Mountains still frosted with the winter’s heavy snowpack and backlit from the setting sun. Evan was a mile ahead of me, a speck, but I could hear him hooting with joy.

After I caught up with him, we rode side by side, hunting for a washboard-free track in the dirt road and remarking on the sine wave of emotion that is bikepacking. Especially on a tough loop like this one, in which we’re researching the route and are quite possibly the first bikepackers on some of these roads, the lows can get pretty low, but then we find ourselves pedaling across one of the most beautiful valleys in recent memory and all the things that brought us down and made us question why we pedal overheavy bikes into the hills in the first place — crashes, pushing through sandy washes, knee pain — are transmuted into hilarious remember-whens, as if we’ve developed instant (and highly selective) amnesia.

We hadn’t gotten a response from Kyle — no signal down here — but as we approached the western edge of the valley and the paved road that would take us back to Ely, we saw a truck pull off the macadam and come to a halt in the dirt. No one got out. Could it be Kyle? we asked each other. Had our salvation arrived, possibly with snacks? It was only a half-mile or so away, but it seemed to take forever to get there. Finally, someone got out of the truck and stood there, watching us as we pedaled closer.

I stood to pedal up the short rise to the truck and about fell off my bike from exhaustion as I came to a stop.

“Kyle?”

Evan and I are sitting at a table overlooking the smoky Copper Queen Casino at the Ramada. We had waltzed into the Smash N Grab restaurant (nee Evah’s) just moments before closing time; I might feel bad were I less famished. Our server seems cheery though. She brings us ice water as we gaze at our menus.

Kyle (yes, it was him at the truck) is a true Trail Angel. He and his brother picked us up and gave us Peanut M&Ms and Powerade as we motored back to Ely. We thanked him profusely and lamented our failure to complete the loop, but he was just happy we’d given the route a shot. Evan and I tried to explain how much we enjoyed the route, which sections were rideable and which weren’t, but it was hard to explain in a moving vehicle. We would have an official debrief the following morning over breakfast at the Prospector Hotel and Gambling Hall.

Evan and I had been dying for cheeseburgers, and Kyle had promised that Smash N Grab served the best burger in Ely. So after checking into our hotel and showering up, we dragged our tired legs down the street to the Ramada.

After ordering our burgers, our server asks if we’d like anything else. “I’ll have a scoop of ice cream,” Evan says. The server asks if he’d like her to bring it out when he’s finished with his burger. “No,” he says, “I’d like it as my appetizer.”

This man is a genius! I tell the server I’ll do the same.

Within moments, we each have a bowl of ice cream before us. I have plain old vanilla, but Evan has birthday cake, which I didn’t even know was a flavor. We eat our ice cream, and it doesn’t even matter that it’s mediocre at best. Evan’s bowl has pieces of actual birthday cake in it.

Spring Valley

Situated between the Schell and Snake mountain ranges, to the east of Ely, Spring Valley is a broad, north–south valley that is so lush, it’s hard to believe that no river feeds into it. Instead, over a hundred springs flow into the valley — hence the name — and feed a water table that is protected by a layer of clay. In the valley grow several plants common to the high desert such as sagebrush, rabbitbrush, greasewood, and the like. But there is one species that stands out: groves of Rocky Mountain juniper, known as swamp cedar locally and Bahsahwahbee in Shoshone, are an ecological oddity. Rocky Mountain juniper trees tend to grow in dry, rocky soil on mountainsides, but these groves are in a valley and fed by groundwater with high salinity. They’re also the only native trees in the entire valley.

The swamp cedars and the surrounding waters are considered sacred to the local Western Shoshone and Goshute Tribes, whose ancestors lived in Spring Valley for thousands of years and used Bahsahwahbee for ceremonial purposes. During the western expansion of white settlers in the nineteenth century, there were three massacres of Native tribes in Spring Valley and at the site of the swamp cedars — two perpetrated by the U.S. Army and one by vigilantes. Since then, the Bahsahwahbee has been considered a sacred memorial site for the massacre victims.

The area encompassing the swamp cedars is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and in 2021 the state of Nevada passed a law barring anyone without a permit from cutting down the Rocky Mountain junipers. (At one point there were plans in place to pipe the water from the valley’s aquifer to thirsty Las Vegas, but those plans were canceled in 2020.) The local Shoshone and Goshute Tribes are now pushing to designate the Bahsahwahbee as a national monument. 

Great Basin National Park

Great Basin is one of the country’s least-visited national parks, but it’s not for lack of attractions: there are pristine alpine lakes (fed by the only glacier in the state), herds of pronghorn, and, thanks to some of the darkest skies in the U.S., great stargazing. You can pedal the paved road all the way to 10,000 feet (or take the shuttle if your legs are talking to you), park your bike, and hike to the 13,065-foot top of Wheeler Peak, the second-tallest mountain in Nevada. Reserve a tour of the Lehman Caves system and explore the limestone and marble caverns and their stalagmites, stalactites, and … helictites, whatever those are. And let’s not forget the oldest living trees on the planet, bristlecone pines, some of which are thousands of years old. If you’re up for it, you can search for Methuselah, the oldest-known bristlecone at 4,900 years and whose location is a secret. nps.gov/grba/index.htm

Baker

The tiny town of Baker, pop. 400 (seems more like 40), is the gateway to Great Basin National Park. You won’t find any luxury resorts or condos in Baker, but you will find all the amenities a bike traveler needs, such as indoor lodging, camping, a couple of restaurants, a general store, and a post office. If I were to repeat this trip, I would plan for a layover day or two in Baker to take advantage of the park and to spend more time petting the shop cats at the Bristlecone General Store. travelnevada.com/cities/baker

Nuts & Bolts

Eastern Nevada

Getting to Ely

As the desk clerk at the La Quinta informed me, Ely is “four hours from everything.” Fly via any number of airlines into Salt Lake City, Reno, or Las Vegas, and rent a car for — you guessed it — a four-hour drive to Ely.

When to Go

The best times to visit eastern Nevada are spring and fall, with an emphasis on spring for wildflowers and more abundant water from snow runoff.

At an elevation of 6,400 feet, Ely is listed as one of the coldest places in the contiguous U.S. That elevation moderates temperatures during the summer: during our trip in late June, we experienced mostly highs in the 70s, and Kyle assured me that a heat wave for Ely consists of a two-hour period of 92°F. As you get into lower-lying areas, however, expect higher temperatures. Baker, for example, sits about a thousand feet lower than Ely and was a fair bit warmer.

Where to Stay

There’s no shortage of places to stay in Ely, but I highly recommend booking early, as it’s a busy tourist destination. We stayed a night each on either end of our trip at La Quinta; it was clean, offered waffles for breakfast, and we were able to park the car in the grocery store lot next door during the trip.

If you want to stay someplace with a bit of character, there are a number of historical hotels in operation, such as the Hotel Nevada and Gambling Hall (opened in 1929) and the Jailhouse Motel and Casino, both downtown. Note that smoking is allowed in casinos and bars in Nevada, a fact I was reminded of when Evan and I rolled into town and got a beer at the Hotel Nevada.

In Baker, you can find indoor lodging at the Stargazer Inn and tent sites (with showers and laundry) at the Whispering Elms Motel and RV Park.

Eat and Drink

We enjoyed excellent breakfast at Margarita’s in the Prospector Hotel and great burgers at Smash N Grab in the Ramada. If you’re looking for fine dining, check out the Cellblock Steakhouse, where you can eat your dinner inside, yes, a jail cell. There are many other options we didn’t get a chance to try, such as taco shops and sports bars. For groceries, there’s a Ridley’s right next to La Quinta on the south end of town.

In Baker, you’ll find snacks and supplies at the Bristlecone General Store and sit-down meals at Sugar, Salt & Malt.

What Bike

I rode a Black Mountain Cycles La Cabra, a steel dropbar mountain bike, with 2.6in. tires, and I think it was the right bike for the mix of smooth gravel, sandy washes, and rocky descents on our route (look for a full Road Test in a future issue). If you pick another route in the area that sticks to the main gravel roads, you can get away with a more traditional gravel bike with skinnier tires, but even then I wouldn’t go any narrower than 40mm.

What to Do

A quick glance at a map will show you an endless array of gravel roads surrounding Ely and its environs, but don’t forget about your mountain bike: there are singletrack trails too, mostly on Ward Mountain to the south. Train buffs should check out the Nevada Northern Railway Museum, home to the Ghost Train of Old Ely, a working steam train. There’s even an annual race in September, in which participants ride the train to the start and then race it — on dirt or on the road — back to Ely!

Farther afield, you can find fishing, hiking, swimming, and boating at Cave Lake State Park, and be sure to check out Ward Charcoal Ovens State Historic Park, featuring giant charcoal ovens you can walk right into (don’t worry, they’re no longer in use).

Water

To be clear, this is the desert, so drinkable water should be top of mind. We got lucky in that this year’s massive snowpack led to healthy springs and creeks, but that may not be the case every year. Pore over your maps, find snowpack and water data online, and call BLM and Forest Service offices for local beta depending on where you’re planning to ride. If you’re worried about not being able to find water on your route, it’s never a bad idea to drive the route ahead of time and cache water.

There are a lot of cattle, elk, and pronghorn in this part of the country, so be sure to filter or treat any water you find. And keep an eye out for abandoned mines — you don’t want to be drinking anything downhill of mining tailings.

Other Routes

It’s important to note that the ride Evan and I did was partly route research; Kyle hadn’t ridden much of it, and as you can see, we ran out of time to finish it. In retrospect, I would have stretched it out to four days. Kyle has documented other routes starting in or near Ely that are fully vetted, much of them perfect for a short week or a long weekend.

Resources

For more information on riding in Ely and eastern Nevada in general, visit elynevada.net.

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