The Radavist

Superstoke Sunday 2018
Photos by Gideon Tsang, words by Josh Cates

Superstoke 2018 rolled out of the Hill Country State Natural Area at a cloudy and cool nine o’clock Saturday morning, one hour behind schedule. Past rides had departed closer to dawn, typically routed through more than one hundred miles of variable Central Texas roadway. This year’s route topped out at ninety, however- less mileage and group’s need for caffeine overcame any concerns about being caught out after dark.

The Origins of Arctic Exploration
Photos and words by Bjørn Olson

March 1998 – Behind me, a strong and gusty north wind stung my legs. On a rock-hard snow trail, I bombed over the frozen sea ice of Norton Sound, effortlessly. My modified mountain bike with Snow Cat rims and two and a half inch wide tires was shifted into the highest gear. With each gust, the fine crystalline snow swirled around the trail in hypnotic patterns, blowing past me and over the polished glass surface of the exposed sea ice. In front of me and to the right sat a lonely and distant mountain cape. To my left was the shallow arc beach of the Norton Bay coastline, several miles away.

Sending it Safely in Cuyuna with Brenda
Words by Brenda Croell and photos by Spencer Harding

Edit note: It came to my attention quickly that the original wording of this article, in my attempt to be playful and transparent with the fact that this was a weekend with my partner whom I adore, I undermined the hard work that Brenda and other Minneapolis WTFs have put in for their community. I asked John to take down the article in that form. Brenda has rewritten the article to better respect their community and women in cycling at large. – Spencer

Cuyuna is everything I love about the Midwest packed into 300 acres. What we lack in elevation we make up for with flowy singletrack through aspens, pines, and descents towards crystal clear lakes. The trails are so immaculately maintained you would have never guessed this place was used for anything else except mountain biking.

The desert. Mountain bikes. There are actually very few places where the two overlap both at any official or extensive capacity. Which is strange, seeing as how the sheer scale of the deserts in California can be lost while looking at a map. There has to be a trail network worth riding in there somewhere! It takes up so much of Southern California! In my experience, this scale is only decipherable after attempts to explore, document and traverse. Otherwise, you’re just looking at expansive land, with a few mountains scattered throughout.

There’s a lot that Southern California got wrong, but setting aside expanses of unadulterated high desert is one thing it got right. Riding bikes through said landscape, only to culminate in a city filled with big box architecture, sports cars and golf courses supplies the much-needed reflection to further appreciate these experiences.

That’s the Palm Canyon Epic; one big juxtaposition, or macro juxtaposition if you will. From Piñon, Juniper, Chaparral, and Sagebrush to Cholla, Agave, Barrel, and Beavertail, the flora and fauna you experience on this ride is unlike anything I’ve ridden before. I’m always on the lookout for desert experiences on the bicycle and let me tell you, the feeling you get while looking for a place, or a route to ride, is equivocal to the vastness experienced while actually there, pleasantly pedaling. Or hell, even pedaling in pain can be fun too. This route has it all.

Luckily, on this ride, there were eleven of us, making for a truly unique excursion into the wide openness that is the high desert.

At the end of each year comes a state of reflection over here at the Radavist. One where I look back at all the imagery created over the previous twelve months and begin to compile a visual catalog of this site’s many narratives. From Peru to Pennsylvania, the autodidact raconteurs who contribute to the Radavist do a damn fine job at documenting their lives, experiences and the people who make this tight community come alive.

This year, I attempted and failed at the year in review post multiple times. For some reason, the linear narrative felt too contrived, too forced. The content, or photographs rather, wanted to live on their own to tell their own tales and come alive once again. In the internet era, moments are often lost to the ephemeral experience of web publishing, which is why I find galleries like this so important to not only this website in particular but our community as a whole.

Please enjoy these photos, these vignettes into each photographer’s life experiences. Bear no mind to the captions, since altering those would in turn, alter their original Reportage. Instead use them to jump-start your mind, perhaps driving you to search back through the archives.

Thanks to the many authors who make this website what it is, continue to share the stoke and thank you, the readers, for coming back!

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Once Upon a Time in the Bolivian West
Photos and words by Ryan Wilson

After spending a year riding the constantly undulating roads in the Cordilleras of Perú and Bolivia, it was time to switch it up just a bit and head out for the altiplano of Bolivia’s volcano-laden western region. This is the area where most cycle tourists head when passing through Bolivia and it’s also the place where the country really earns its reputation of vast open spaces with an endless array of sandy/corrugated roads, and other-worldly landscapes.

International Kook Exchange Program: Full Power, No Shower
Words by Jorja Creighton, photos by Jorja Creighton and Mar-Del

It was Independence Day, July 4th. In the trailer park town of Eagle Point in Oregon four of us took refuge and slept on the steps of the local church – intimidated by the general hoo-ha of the patriotic celebrations. On the concrete under the watchful eye of JC while fireworks exploded and smoke settled. My first Independence Day.

The neon hub of the American West is Las Vegas. An oasis for many, plopped just outside the California / Nevada border, in an otherwise inhospitable zone if it weren’t for the constant intravenous drip of water and tourism capital.

As Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi outlined in their manifesto, Learning from Las Vegas, the “ugly and ordinary architecture, or the decorated shed,” epitomizes man’s ruin. My interpretation of this architectural masterpiece is man’s inability to create anything that competes visually with the natural world, just beyond the boundaries of this neon wasteland. This is not a cynical view of development, or architecture in general, rather a point of departure for this particular trip.

“The human argument for setting aside vast stretches of the American desert as parks and preserves and wilderness and plain open space always includes the importance of unspoiled vistas. As the only real difference between Las Vegas and Death Valley is that we made a strategic decision to fill one with casino hotels and insurance company headquarters and neighborhoods while leaving the other more or less intact for the mutual benefit of humanity and the plants and creatures and ecosystems in such a mostly wild place.” Ken Layne, Desert Oracle, #016.

Death Valley prides itself on being the Hottest, Driest, and Lowest National Park. It, along with the deserts of Africa and the Middle East, is one of the hottest places on Earth, with temperatures exceeding 120ºF frequently during the summer months. In fact, the highest temperature ever recorded was 134ºF (56.7ºC) on July 10, 1913, at Furnace Creek. As its name implies, Death Valley is indeed made up of a series of basins, bordered by mountain ranges, of varying geologic characteristics. From the striped strata of the Last Chance Range, to the colorful, mineral-rich Funeral Mountains and the alien-like, almost science fiction-native, Amargosa Range.

420.69th annual Nutmeg Nor’easter

Words by Ultra Romance, photos by Erin @erinmarie.gordon, Jon Weekes @gungywump, Jamie M @jamiemurrett, and “Big Janet”

I’ve lived in the same area of shoreline Connecticut my entire life.  My home is a garage artist’s studio that I just so happen to share with my mom’s gardening tools.  Paris, Milan, Clinton, CT.  As weather permits, I return home about 4 months out of the year; always being sure not to miss the splendor of autumn; the beauty of death as the colors fall, ushering in the grim shadows of wintär.

We are three prospectors and this is our creed:

For over a hundred years, Death Valley has had its minerals extracted by machine and mule. Not just for gold and silver, either. Prospectors scoured the mountains for borax, antimony, copper, lead, zinc, and tungsten, packing out their load by mule. We are modern day Prospectors, however, we are not seeking riches, yet experiences, of which will be beaten into our soul by miles of washboarded and rocky roads. Our mules are our bicycles and we’ll take only photos, leaving no trace, taking nothing from this land. It’s given enough over the decades and its scars are still visible on the surface.

There’s no death in this valley, but life, at a micro scale, so nuanced that without the pace of the bicycle, might be passed over, unnoticed.

In Los Angeles, millions of people vacate the city in a yearly migration, creating compelling imagery, representing the trouble with car culture. While we prefer to move about the city by bicycle, we too can’t help but flee its confines by automobile. Yet, in doing so, our attempts are always to get as far away from modern civilization as possible, or at least that’s what I tell myself everytime we load the Land Cruiser up and head out of town.

Sure, I’d rather embark on a bicycle tour during a holiday but when our friend Aimee invited us to the Oak Flat Fire Lookout in the Sequoia National Forest for a Turkey Day celebratory dinner, we couldn’t resist. So, there we were the day before Thanksgiving, escaping LA for the solitude found in its neighboring National Parks and National Forests. Luckily, we were long gone by the time the freeways turned into light shows…

Geology Through Bikepacking
Photos and words by Locke Hassett

As humans, we seek exploration of new places and the lessons that such exploration may bring; self-discovery, physical challenge, humility, solitude, community, and unforgettable views to name a few. We refer to this as recreation, which comes from the term “to re-create”. These endeavors are valuable, perhaps necessary, to the self. But, if we only learn about ourselves, the amount that we can give back to the world that allows us the privilege to explore can be limited. Ever so often, we must explore for reasons beyond understanding and re-create ourselves. We must explore with intention and inquiry. If the intention is set to learn not only about ourselves but about the landscape; it’s natural history and current state, we just might be able to become stewards of its future.

The Geology through Bikepacking course offered at Prescott College explores the geology, geography, and ecology of the Colorado Plateau through 3 different bikepacking trips over the course of a month. This course provides an opportunity to learn about a landscape by traveling through it. It uses the bicycle as a means not only for recreation, but for education. This is the story.

Over the past week, nature flipped a switch. Suddenly, like migrating birds, the 100º weather had flown to the southern hemisphere, leaving behind clouds, cooler temperatures and even traces of precipitation. Basically, the perfect ingredients for successful dirt bike rides. All summer, I’d stuck to shorter, partially shaded rides, or banked on getting in my mileage before the heat of the day and now I felt comfortable taking off up my favorite dirt climbs.

Down the Ladder into Hell
Words and 35mm film photos by Stan Engelbrecht

I don’t remember when I first heard of ‘Die Hel’ (The Hell). It’s the kind of thing that comes to you like a mysterious rural legend – a rumour of a tiny community of farmers living for decades in complete isolation in an impenetrable valley paradise. More than anything, I wanted to go to ‘Die Hel’. Places and people like this have always fascinated me. South Africa has for many, many years had a complex social and political landscape, and I always like to imagine that these individualist pioneers left whatever country they came from to escape some kind of governmental or religious ideology, and when faced with the same developing in their newfound home, they were driven further into the natural world. To live simply, in peace, with nature as their surround.

Southern California has been an October oven, with temperatures hanging out in the 90’s and 100’s for months now. Last week, we had enough and organized a group shred sess on Mount Piños, our favorite, yet not so frequented trail network about an hour and some change from Golden Saddle Cyclery. The drive isn’t bad either when you factor in the fact that everyone is going the opposite direction on Interstate 5. We sent out a text thread and gauged interest. Cache, one of the shop mechanics at GSC wanted in, as did Kyle, Serena, Colin, Matt from Mount Wilson Bicycling Association, and myself.

Truthfully I was a little worried about this ride. You climb about 3,000′ in 10 miles and it’s straight up with no change in grade. I hadn’t ridden since South Africa, save for a few grocery store runs, on a lower saddle, across flat terrain. While I was concerned, I’m not one to sit around and wait for the recommended four weeks of recovery, especially since I hadn’t felt pain in over a week. The human body is strange like that. It’s like a tea kettle, only whistling when it’s hot. I had been going hard leading up to South Africa, a bit of “training” if you will, which consisted of mostly doing bigger riders on dirt and here in LA, that means lots of steep grades. After South Africa, it was so hot out that I couldn’t ride even if my body was in working order. There’s nothing more miserable for me, not being able to exercise at all, yet I found motivation in the distraction-free life of being forced to sit at the computer every waking moment. Regardless, it had been what felt like an eternity… Was I finally rested up?

Boiz in Knitters: Get Weird. Ride Bikes. Care Less.
Photos and words by Locke Hassett

April in Arizona. Colors are erupting from every tree, water is still vaguely flowing in some of the washes, the nights are still cool and the days warm enough to wear short shorts. Students itch to finish the semester. Love is in the air, or maybe it’s just pollen.

When Andrew first mentioned to me that he and Wilson were planning a bike tour for the last weekend before finals, I was hesitant. But then four seconds passed and I remembered what truly matters in this life: using the bicycle as a means to avoid adulthood.

The Road to L’Eroica: An Italian Honeymoon
Words and photos by Ultra Romance

We had been running from winter… riding from winter… actually hike-a-biking away from winter in the Swiss Alps for nearly 2 weeks now.  Snow, wind, rain, and low UV indexes had driven us out of the most verdant and bucolic panoramas I’ve ever eyeballed. Away from the abrupt mountaintops that rise from the undulating valleys like the jagged teeth of a gnashing puma eagle.  My hair was damp and lifeless, and our bodies were craving the sunlight and ACTUAL early September weather (fair and pleasant for those of you who live in the Swiss tundra).  In a split second decision, while climbing out of a cold and empty valley after hiking down a roots rock reggae slip n’ slide, we hopped a train south to Europe’s fashion capital, Milano. It just felt natural.

Ciao Italy!