Mountain Biking Stories
Editor’s Note: Today’s post comes from Dan Moore, down in southern Utah. Dan sent us this story in response to our request to “Tell Us About Your Rad Dad.” Last week’s featured submission was from a young lady whose discovery of herself and the outdoors is still unfolding. This week’s feature offers a look back…
I can’t help but say or think or feel it: this is Abbey Land. Despite the various crusts that have formed over the years since Abbey was alive and well in the Moab area, this is still his place. Of course, it is the earth first, shifting and sliding and tectonically galloping—and not giving a…
The Continental Divide Trail is not often traveled, and rarely by bike. The sheer remoteness makes access tricky. With this in mind, Scott Rinckenberger, Justin Olsen and I set out for 11 days on our bikes, pedaling northeast from Chief Joseph Pass. We wanted to shed some light on this beautiful area. The second night…
Friday night at the Hot Tomato is not for those in a hurry. Hungry customers grip pints of beer and compare notes on the day’s rides in lines that spill into the parking lot. Music pumps and the staff whirls behind the counter, tossing floury dough, yelling requests to the kitchen, giving each other shit.…
In a fossil-rich corner of western Colorado, set against lush agricultural fields, the big-box stores of Grand Junction and the sandstone formations of the Colorado National Monument, you’ll find Fruita. These days, the town is an international mountain-biking destination known for its ribbony, high-desert trails, technical routes overlooking the Colorado River and funky downtown where…
Downieville, California was once one of the richest towns in the state, but by the mid-1990s it had gone full bust—until a few local mountain bikers’ began using the local trails to breathe new life into the town, turning the former ghost town into a recreation mecca.
In the 1980s, a group of cyclists in Washington banded together to protect their local trails from illicit activities; 30 years later, that momentum has reshaped the city and preserved a watershed.
The Trans-Cascadia has become one of the Pacific Northwest’s most notorious races. This past August, the Back Country Horsemen of Washington joined the Trans-Cascadia team—a first for all involved.
The Slickrock Trail, in Moab, Utah, is one of the most popular mountain bike rides in the world. Now, under a recent BLM decision, it could also be opening to oil and gas drilling.
When Vince Anderson took a break from alpine climbing, his mountaineering attitude manifested itself in a single-speed hardtail, on which he’s won some of the sport’s most grueling races.
“That comfort, the ability to feel like you’re not stepping outside of some boundary; It’s not like, ‘Do I belong here?’ No, this is where I’m supposed to be.”
Perched in the Himalaya and once accessible only by trail, India’s Zanskar region has remained largely free of Western influences for over 2,000 years. That could all change as a new highway brings a wave of instant globalization.
In Coyhaique, Chile, the ghosts of resource extraction may offer a path toward a new recreation-based future.
A bikepacking expedition inspired by one of North America’s most iconic landscapes, and the American Prairie Reserve’s audacious effort to restore it.
BIKE Magazine contributing editor Michael Ferrentino on our perceived right to ride wherever we want.
Outdoor recreation can be a lifeline for rural economies, but the industry has also benefited from the erasure of Indigenous peoples from their lands.
Photo editor Kyle Sparks kicks off our new social media series, “Best of Home,” documenting the everyday, out-the-back-door trails that mountain biking depends on.
In the second installment of our “Best of Home” series, photographer, writer and editor Colin Wiseman takes us to Washington State’s gloomy, fern-filled Whatcom County for a signature Pacific Northwest ride.
How one suburban mountain biker’s vision for a trail system reshaped a former industrial town—and turned trail building into a family tradition.
As editor of the world’s largest mountain bike magazine, Nicole Formosa showed her audience the world’s largest issues—and revealed the sport’s resistance to confronting them.
The mountain-biking star of Becoming Ruby seeks out some of skiing's most powerful females.
Following in Indigenous Footsteps on the Ute Pass Trail.
An unlikely community, in the most unlikely location, has become an even more unlikely force for public lands conservation.
An interview with Gabo Benoit, trail advocate and mountain-bike mayor of Coyhaique, Chile.
In a tiny Colorado ski town, the world’s oldest mountain-bike club is facing the complicated reality of recreation gone right.
In North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest, a collaboration between anglers and mountain bikers uses better trails to create healthier rivers.
After nearly 30 years on the hallowed trails of southern British Columbia, Betty Birrell still thinks life is one big playground—and that you’re never too old to send.
In learning her ancestral language, one mountain biker finds a different way to relate to the world, herself and her community—and ride her bike.
