#gravel

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Wood Is Good: Twmpa Cycles GR1 Gravel Bike Review

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Wood Is Good: Twmpa Cycles GR1 Gravel Bike Review

Steel may be real but, for Petor Georgallou, that cliché begs the question: is wood good? Ever the curious reviewer, Petor has long wanted to test the ride quality of a wooden frame and the opportunity to ride a Twmpa Cycles GR1 gravel bike finally presented itself a few months back. But before Petor dips into his ride impressions, he shares an exchange with another wooden builder, Mark Kelly, about the characteristics that make wood an especially compelling frame-building material. After checking out Petor’s review of the GR1, drop into the comments and let us know…would you? Wood you!?

A Fine Time in Raleigh, North Carolina With Fine Bikes and Oak City Cycling

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A Fine Time in Raleigh, North Carolina With Fine Bikes and Oak City Cycling

Last year Mitchell Connell fell in love with a custom road bike he saw at a bike show. After missing an opportunity to test ride the bike, he took a road trip to Raleigh, North Carolina to find it and its creator, Charles Thompson of Fine Bikes. Along the way, Mitchell got to pay a visit to the iconic local shop, Oak City Cycling, and get the tour of Raleigh’s mixed-surface riding.  

Athens Divide: A Micro Adventure Race

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Athens Divide: A Micro Adventure Race

The Athens Divide is proof that you don’t have to lose a night of sleep to experience the full range of adventure racing. Billed as a “micro adventure,” this point-to-point race hosted by Donhou Bicycles takes riders over Athens’ urban ridgelines where, no matter the bike, everyone’s hiking somewhere. Read on for Tom Donhou’s recap of the first Athens Divide, with photos from Maliakos Nikos.

San Juan Splendor: Circumnavigation of Mt Wilson

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San Juan Splendor: Circumnavigation of Mt Wilson

While winter has already set in over in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains, Todd Gillman and a troop of friends snuck in one last hurrah of the year, a two-day leaf peep bike tour to circumnavigate Mt. Wilson while the leaves were still poppin’. Read on for Todd’s lively route description and file this instant backcountry classic away for next year—you won’t soon forget Aaron LaVanchy‘s stunning photo set…

Losing Our Heads at the Onguza Loskop Local Cycling Festival in Namibia

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Losing Our Heads at the Onguza Loskop Local Cycling Festival in Namibia

Held in Omaruru, Namibia this past July, the Onguza Loskop Local is a weekend festival with “great food, drinks & friends, with a wee bit of cycling thrown in for good measure.” After deciding the event looked really lekker Cape Town locals Stan Engelbrecht and Donnet Dumas made the trip out and each rode the event in divergent fashions—Donnet on a borrowed too-small Giant, and Stan on his ill-advised fixed-gear with skinny tires—and share a joint account of their adventure…

Devil’s Cardigan: The 2023 Australian Gravel National Championships

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Devil’s Cardigan: The 2023 Australian Gravel National Championships

Picture an island 42 degrees south of the equator deep in the middle of winter. Surrounded by great oceans, it is battered by cold rain, snow, and wind. The Roaring Forties haunt the island like the growls of a Devil. Born out of these challenging conditions, The Devils Cardigan seemed the only name fit to describe the Australian Gravel National Championships. 

Read on for Scott Mattern’s recap of Tasmania’s annual off-road rite of passage and how he made it devilishly difficult by combing both the 50km and 100km distances…

The Rough Road Renegade: Introducing the Curve GMX+ Steel

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The Rough Road Renegade: Introducing the Curve GMX+ Steel

Is it a drop-bar mountain bike? A gravel rig on ‘roids? Or a bike from another dimension? When it comes to codifying bikes these days, it’s really easy to get really lost (real quick). However, once in a while, a bike comes along that challenges the norm, flips the bird to conventional geo numbers, and stands alone: not as an outlier, but as an original. Sam Rice has been test riding Curve Cycling‘s long-awaited GMX+ and shares his thoughts on why it isn’t “just another touring bike” below, along with a look at their updated Seek 430 FM carbon fork.

Le Premier Pilgrimage: The Inaugural Edition of Le Pilgrimage – French Gravel Extraordinaire

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Le Premier Pilgrimage: The Inaugural Edition of Le Pilgrimage – French Gravel Extraordinaire

On September 14th, a group of cyclists gathered around a table for dinner in Puy-Saint-Vincent, a small mountain village in the French Alps. Among them were an Italian, a Spaniard, a handful of Dutch, a British couple, a French couple, and a Costa Rican. They were meeting for the first time and were strangers to one another. However, they shared a common passion: mountains, food, people, and bikes – and that’s what brought them together for the inaugural Le Pilgrimage, a brevet-style gravel event…

Under the Hood: Reviewing Gravel Drop-Bar Dropper-Post Remotes from Crankbrothers, PRO, ENVE and Easton

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Under the Hood: Reviewing Gravel Drop-Bar Dropper-Post Remotes from Crankbrothers, PRO, ENVE and Easton

MicroSHIFT, SRAM, and now Shimano all offer gravel brake levers with built-in dropper post remotes. And there are ways to hack most left shifters to work great as dropper remotes. But if you aren’t currently in the market for a new drivetrain, or if you run a front derailleur, there aren’t many good plug-and-play options that work from both the hoods and the drops. Travis Engel found just four of them, from ENVE, Crankbrothers, PRO, and Easton/Fox. It turns out they’re all very special in their own little ways.

No One Is Going To Do It Except You: A Schön Studio Shop Visit

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No One Is Going To Do It Except You: A Schön Studio Shop Visit

If you weren’t already familiar with Schön Studio, you may have just seen some of their stellar work in our recent MADE bike show coverage. Tucked into a corner of a quiet neighborhood in Squamish BC, Danielle Schön has been building bikes, teaching classes, and doing a variety of other metalwork and art out of her hand-built, backyard workshop. Read on below for Pat Valade‘s shop visit and in-depth profile… 

The Hero We Need: A microSHIFT Sword 1x Drivetrain Review

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The Hero We Need: A microSHIFT Sword 1x Drivetrain Review

MicroSHIFT’s new Sword group came into Travis Engel’s life at the perfect moment. He had been noticing that his Ratio-12-speed-converted SRAM Force shift quality would degrade quickly, as the cable housing wore and friction increased. It’s a sad side-effect of the Ratio conversion’s decreased cable pull per-shift. Also, the hydraulic brakes had too much dead stroke for Travis’ discerning index fingers. He was looking for something new. That’s when, like the sexy stranger disrupting a rom-com protagonist’s unhappy European vacation, microSHIFT Sword bumped into Travis with a very timely meet-cute.

Clint’s SaltAir Cycles Twentysixie Fixed Gear

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Clint’s SaltAir Cycles Twentysixie Fixed Gear

While the 2023 Enve Grodeo was chock-full of some of the snazziest bespoke all-road bikes from around the world, Spencer Harding’s eye was caught by an eccentric build noticeably absent from the show floor. Fortunately, he was able to get the bike’s owner, Clint, to stop throwing skids long enough to snag a closeup. Pulling influence from some strange corners of the bike world and outfitting the frame with some amazing and unique parts, Clint’s SaltAir stood out for more reasons than its single rear cog. Clint rode this pink dream on all 92 miles of the Enve Grodeo, a feat in itself regardless of it being a fixed gear 26-er. Let’s have a closer look!  

No Sleep ‘Til Ísafjörður: The 2023 Arna Westfjords Way Challenge

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No Sleep ‘Til Ísafjörður: The 2023 Arna Westfjords Way Challenge

The Arna Westfjords Way Challenge is an ultra-endurance cycling race that traverses the seaside perimeter of Iceland’s Westfjords region in four stages over five days with 600 miles of mixed surface riding and 37,000+ feet of elevation gain. The route was originally established by accomplished endurance cyclists Lael Wilcox, Chris Burkard, Payson McElveen, Nichole Baker, and Rugile Kaladyte and formatted into a stage race by the team at Cycling Westfjords in 2021. Now in its second year, the event features a variety of innovative aspects that make it unique in the world of ultra cycling, which benefits the local communities and also the riders’ experiences. Josh Weinberg was on the ground covering this year’s event and, below, shares an insightful event recap and massive image gallery from this strikingly beautiful part of the world.

Scouting Gravel Cycling Routes Around Hagerman Pass, in Heart of Colorado Rockies

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Scouting Gravel Cycling Routes Around Hagerman Pass, in Heart of Colorado Rockies

Last August, four friends set out to explore the high mountain gravel roads around Hagerman Pass, Colorado, staging each day out of the newly renovated retreat center called “Beyul.”  The Hagerman Pass area is an under-appreciated gravel-riding gem in the heart of the Colorado Rockies. The pass connects Basalt- a small town just outside Aspen – to Leadville, which needs no introduction to the cycling world. Continue reading below for a sampling of the primo Hagerman gravel riding the friends found during their stay and for info about the Beyul gravel camp kicking off later this summer with Aspen Expedition Gravel Bike Guides.

2023 Enve Grodeo and Builder Round-Up Part 2: Sycip, Rock Lobster, Wish One, Moots, Scarab, Quirk, Boredure, Breadwinner, ENVE

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2023 Enve Grodeo and Builder Round-Up Part 2: Sycip, Rock Lobster, Wish One, Moots, Scarab, Quirk, Boredure, Breadwinner, ENVE

Today we are back with part two of Spencer Harding‘s ENVE Grodeo and Builder Round-up coverage. If you missed the builds featured in yesterday’s post, we’d recommend going back and giving them a gander—3D-printed parts (most ti but some steel, too!) seems to be the unofficial theme for the year but there’s plenty to see across the creative spectrum! Today, we finish up with the remaining frame builders in the showcase—with a few more overseas features—then we head out on the weekend’s main event, a 92-mile gravel ride on some of the best dirt in the northern Wasatch Mountains. Let’s dive in!