MARCH 2024 Stoked Spoke Adventure Series - Swift Industries

MARCH 2024 Stoked Spoke Adventure Series - Swift Industries

Back for its eighth installment, it’s time for another Stoked Spoke Series!! Stoked Spoke is a series of bicycling adventure presentations hosted in-person by members of the community. In observance of these dark, wet, cold winter days, this series is intended to bring our community together and inspire your next adventure.

Each evening highlights four to six self-supported bike camping routes complete with maps, slideshow and planning tips. We are dedicating February to adventure tales by Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC). This year Stoked Spoke is being hosted in Seattle, WA and in Denver, CO by our friends at Treehouse Cyclery.  We’ll be publishing a summary of each Stoked Spoke event on our blog, including route summaries and digital maps.

Seattle Weds MAR 27th

Rhino Room (+21)

Doors open at 6:30pm

Presentations 7pm-9pm

Tickets: $5 a person. Sold at the door!

We’ll be accepting donations of gear on behalf of Facing Homelessness. For a list of supplies and gear that we’ll be accepting look here.

Seattle’s March presenters include:

 

Everet O’Cillin

Route: https://ridewithgps.com/routes/41850687

Iceland is a landscape in perpetual transition. A land of fire and ice where the weather plays its own mercurial character in the physical and cultural landscape. I dreamed up this tour with a plan to head out in Summer 2022. Planning this trip gave me the unique opportunity to create an experience of Iceland using two of my favorite means of engaging with the world, art and cycling. My route was inspired by Roni Horn’s Library of Water, Vatnasafn, an immersive art installation and collective self portrait that houses core samples collected from Iceland’s five major glaciers. The route connected sections of the Iceland Divide, Westfjords Way, The Witch of the West and the South East Coast on as many trails and gravel roads as possible linking every museum, gallery, and cultural site I could find. But at the time of my scheduled departure I could barely walk, let alone ride a bike. I spent the following year healing from a traumatic pelvic fracture that left me in a wheelchair, but my doctors were optimistic. One year later I was on a plane headed for Reykjavik. Delaying the trip meant that my friend Tessa Hulls would be able to join me, adding an element of mutual softness to the tour that neither of us had ever really allowed ourselves before as endurance solo travelers. I spent three months embedded in awe of the Icelandic landscape and began to empathize with its dramatic geology, the landscape of my own body cracked open and reshaped so many times over. There is a comfort to be found in seeing the broken earth of my body mirrored in the land around me. So many aspects of my own body, my gender, my identity felt in alignment with the cultural and geological story of Iceland. A body of land strategically domesticated yet seemingly wild. A country that occupies a larger space in the human imagination than it does on a map.

 

Anna Trakhman

Route: https://ridewithgps.com/trips/140634599

Seattle to Portland, but gravel. Over the 300 mile/23k 4 day route (which should absolutely be done in 5+ days) we went from hustling and bustling Seattle to lush, quiet and rainforested gravel roads to the drier climate of the Mount Adams Wilderness and experienced what felt like many seasons and environments. Highlights included riding past Mount Rainier, over Babyshoe Pass in the Gifford Pinchot, gasping when we saw Mount Adams for the first time, stopping in little towns like Trout Lake, biking over the Bridge of the Gods to cross the Columbia, and finally heading West to get to our final destination of Portland (where we took an Amtrak back to Seattle).
Professor Dave
All over Seattle, as far south as Rainier Beach; as far north as St. Edwards Park; as far east as the Lake; as far west as the Sound
 
kelsie denner – Miles, Memories, Meltdowns : Biking to the Pacific coast with a 5-year-old
City grind to sandy toes – trade Seattle streets for ferry wakes, a true PNW baptism to kickstart this epic out and back. Roll through Sequim’s lavender haze, high-five seals on Port Angeles’ waterfront, and maybe dip a toe in Lake Crescent’s glacial chill (if you’re brave). Forks beckons with Twilight whispers, before reaching Rialto Beach in a symphony of sand and surf. Rinse and repeat on the way back.
Ginger Reinauer – The Cowichan Valley 8 and Beyond
Sail the high seas aboard the blackball ferry, navigate past a historic parliament building, glide along the galloping goose, trot along the transcanada tail, depart on the part time fishing vessel and part time ferry in mill bay, stop for donuts as you cruise back towards home.

Denver Friday Mar 29th

Treehouse Cyclery

Doors open at 6:30pm

Presentations 7pm-9pm

Tickets: $10 a person. Sold at the door!

Denver’s March presenters include:

Heather Ryburn, Rowdy Ridge Ramble
This was the first bikepacking trip the Galpackas community went on! The Galpackas is all about getting more gals on bikes together, sharing adventures, and finding community. This trip features a group of women cheering one another on as they meandered along dirt roads, shared snacks and stories, slept under the stars, and got a little bit damp too. This point-to-point route offers mountain vistas, old railroad grades, and wide open parks cradled by the big beautiful Collegiate Peaks of Central Colorado.
Erik Stoermer, Smoke n Fire 400(ish)
The Idaho Smoke ‘n’ Fire 400 is a 400(ish) mile self-supported mountain bike race(ish) traversing some of Idaho’s diverse geography on two-track, big gravel and dirt Forest Service roads, challenging singletrack, some hike-a-bike, and a few paved roads. This 400ish mile loop features nearly 41,000 feet of climbing with big expanses and big views.
Oly Abbate, Rampart Range Road
Handcrafted with a challenging ride in mind, this route shows that adventure in Colorado can be barely out your doorstep. The roads are gorgeous, resupply is relatively plentiful, the camping access excellent, and the climbs will kick your butt and you’ll love it.
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