Last week I set off to ride the Swiss Alpine Bike #1 MTB route, which runs across Switzerland from Scuol to Aigle (or Aigle to Scuol), covering 670km and 24700m of climbing. It is suggested to cover the route in 16 days, but I planned around 8, booked my accommodation on Booking.com and arrived in […]
Alpine Bike #1 route in Switzerland – the preparation
I’m sitting on a train, travelling backwards on the way to Zurich. Every now and then I take a cursory glance at my bike bag near the train’s entry. My final destination today is Scuol, right in the east of Switzerland in the canton of Graubuenden. But this is far from my final destination on […]
9 things I learnt from an overnight bikepacking trip
This weekend I packed up my bike and a few key things and joined a mate for a bikepacking meet up, called the Jimna Escape. The concept is simple – everyone meets at Jimna Base Camp, which is a school in a timber town that has passed it’s use by date. So now the school […]
Exploring the Old Ghost Road
To experience sublime natural beauty is to confront the total inadequacy of language to describe what you see. Words cannot convey the scale of a view that is so stunning it is felt. In such moments natural beauty becomes a kind of devastation – it is pure encounter, too compressed in time and space to […]
Reviewed: Osprey Escapist 32
Review by Tom Arch, photos by Wil Barrett While the mountain bike market is continually being divided into more and more specialised gear each season, not all of us have the room (or the money) to have a garage filled with multiple bikes and different types of apparel for each day of the week. Sometimes […]
Monaro Cloudride 1000 rolls out this Easter
Related Event: Monaro Cloudride 1000
The south east region of Australia hosts a new ultra endurance mountain bike event this Easter. The Monaro Cloudride 1000 is an ultra endurance bikepacking event where riders compete against the clock riding solo, self supported, self timed, navigating over a prescribed off-road route on fire trails and forest roads for 1000 kilometres before arriving back […]
Racing the Tour Divide: Strength in Numbers
Last week, we first heard from Sydney-based rider Arran Pearson, about heading off to Banff to start the Tour Divide, and like the route, the story continues… The rest of the first week is pretty much a blur – I spent the first few days just getting used to the riding and was managing to […]
Why Ride the Tour Divide?
Why? It’s a question I’ve been getting a lot lately. Closely followed by ‘are you insane?’ and not to mention my personal favourite ‘Idiot.’ See, later this month (June 14th to be exact) I along with approximately 120 other nutters will be lining up for what is often referred to as the toughest bicycle race […]