Category Archives: Mountain Biking

Reveal the Path: Good Adventure Porn, Decent Film

Recently, I had the opportunity to see a screening of Reveal the Path, a new documentary from Ride the Divide executive producer Mike Dion. Ride the Divide follows a handful of racers during the 2008 Tour Divide. For those unfamiliar, the Tour Divide is a 2,700 mile, self-supported mountain bike race from Banff, British Columbia in Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico on the U.S.-Mexico border. That style of self-supported mountain bike racing and riding is called bike packing.

Reveal is, in many ways, a sequel to Ride the Divide. Though it’s not about racing, the film follows Tour Divide alums Matthew Lee (five-time winner), Kurt Refsnider (2011 winner), Dion (he competed in the 2008 race, though he did not finish), and the film’s producer, first-time bike packer (and Ride the Divide director) Hunter Weeks on a bike packing journey, riding and camping on trails and remote mountain roads across Scotland, France, Morocco,  Nepal, and Alaska.

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Shredding Like It’s 1995

Eddie Roman’s 1995 mountain bike and BMX video Hammertime is an amazing period piece. Punk rock and metal soundtrack, Hi8 video, choppy transitions between short clips of trick after trick; all staples of the skateboard and BMX videos of the era. Hammertime features big name riders like Brian Lopes, Hans Rey, Fuzzy Hall, and Mat Hoffman jumping dirt jumps, riding their mountain bikes like BMX bikes on the street, and shredding single track.

My First Bike: Tony Pereira

We’re launching a new feature today on The Bicycle Story called My First Bike. My First Bike explores the origins of professional frame builders by going back to the start and looking at the first bike they ever built. The inaugural My First Bike features Tony Pereira—Portland, OR-based frame builder, multi-time North American Handmade Bicycle Show prize winner, and master egg-poacher.

Give me the short rundown of your first bike: when was it built, where, materials, any special details about it, etc.

I built my first bike in 2003. At the time I was working in a bike shop in Salt Lake City and we were selling a fair number of 29ers. I liked the idea, but thought I could make some improvements, so my first bike was a 29er. I had been singlespeeding for a little while, so I made it a singlespeed too. The materials and construction were the same as what I use today: fillet brazed steel.

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Jacquie Phelan: The Godmother of Women’s Mountain Biking


Photo by Jean-Pierre Praderes for Jan Heine’s The Competition Bicycle. 

As the title plainly states, Jacquie Phelan is the Godmother. Or perhaps the Queen. At the very least, she’s one of mountain biking’s early pioneers and helped carved a path into the sport for women. She helped found the National Off Road Bicycle Association along with other mountain bike luminaries of the day like Jack Ingram and her husband Charlie Cunningham; won NORBA championships and many other mountain bike races throughout the 80s and 90s; founded the first women’s mountain bike club and continues today to promote women’s mountain biking through it. Jacquie and I spoke about her introduction to mountain biking, her early days of racing in a “man’s” sport, the foundation of the WOMBATS and more.

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Bikepacking the Wilds of Canada

Last summer, professional mountain biker Matt Hunter took a small backpack with camping and fishing gear, an HD video camera, his mountain bike, and little else; loaded into a float plane; and set off by himself for a two-day, point-to-point trail ride through the Canadian wilderness. The short video he produced shows off an adventure most of us only dream of: spectacular trail riding across stunning landscapes, dinner caught in an alpine lake and cooked over an open fire, a close (but not too close) encounter with grizzlies in a mountain meadow.