All posts by Chris

Every Road is a “Hill” Road

With only a week to go before driving west towards the start of our summer on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, we hit pause on packing up our apartment and set sail for Burlington, VT.  We chose Burlington primarily because Charity, Casey, and Julie were running the Vermont City Marathon, but also because we had set aside time to test ourselves and our gear on a last-minute shakeout tour.  The route we rode is known as the Green Mountain Gravel Growler, and is composed of 250 miles of Vermont dirt roads and singletrack-goodness.  We only had 3 days for the ride, so we planned to ride a 100 mile sub-loop.

Continue reading Every Road is a “Hill” Road

Bonus Bottle Cage with Salsa Anything Cage HD

Alternative Text
Above: The finished product, with a Klean Canteen 64oz in the Salsa Anything Cage, and a Clean Bottle in the extra water bottle cage I added to the back of the Anything Cage.

Extra water storage is always helpful for bikepacking.  Below I detailed a hack I came up with for mounting an extra bottle cage behind the Salsa Anything Cages on my fork.  I’m very happy with it, so I figured I’d share for anyone out there who is working on dialing in their own bikepacking rig.  Happy trails!

Continue reading Bonus Bottle Cage with Salsa Anything Cage HD

Western Maine & Tim Pond Bikepacking Weekend

In case you haven’t heard, we are planning another long bike tour next summer.  This time it will be different, though, because the majority of it will be on trails and dirt roads.  To handle the different terrain, we will use different gear – this style of bike touring is referred to as bikepacking.  Due to weddings and other craziness this spring and summer, though, we haven’t had a chance for any practice (“shakeout”) tours until now.

Continue reading Western Maine & Tim Pond Bikepacking Weekend

Glacier Summer Trip

This past summer, Rachel and I took time off work for a trip to Big Sky country, with the highlight of the trip being 3 days in Glacier National Park.  My siblings, Casey, Charity & Julie joined us, which was particularly exciting because Charity and Julie had never been to Montana.  Also, Casey had never been there besides one trip in the winter and I had never been to Glacier before.  We were excited for lots of first-time experiences!

Continue reading Glacier Summer Trip