advocacy

Earlier this month, almost 200 women gathered at Burke Mountain Resort and the neighboring well-known Kingdom Trails for the first New England Mountain Bike Association (NEMBA) Women’s Summit. The goal of the Summit was to identify obstacles to leadership that women face in the cycling world, bring together female NEMBA members and leaders and ultimately ...

Access4Bikes and Specialized are giving away a 2017 S-Works Stumpjumper to support trail access in the birthplace of mountain biking, Marin County, California. A $10 donation gets you a chance to win a top-of-the-line Stumpjumper in your choice of 29” or 27.5” wheels, valued at $8500. The S-Works build comes with a Sram Eagle drivetrain ...

Words: Brice Shirbach Photos: Abram Eric Landes Originally published in Issue #189 Growing up, I’d often sit and stare at it. My obsession began the moment my family moved to Emmitsburg, Maryland. I was 7 years old and we piled into a single-story rancher a mile and a half down the road from town square. ...

The National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA) just released the latest edit from its “Slowmo Bro” video series, in which pro mountain biker Matt Hunter rips berms and learns a few things about trail stewardship. NICA and IMBA’s tips for showing your trail love: Participate in local trail maintenance and trail building days. The more you ...

Words: Sarah Galbraith In parts of our country, when winter takes a firm, frosty grip on your core, some mountain bikers mark the turn of seasons by putting away their bikes and tuning up their skis. But explosive growth in winter fat biking has taken hold in the past few years: Sales grew 44 percent ...

I had been in the town of Quincy, California, for no longer than an hour before I was perched atop Mount Hough, beer in hand, peering down at the deep-blue waters of Crystal Lake alongside Mason Werner and Garen Becker. Werner, a resident, and Becker, a native of Santa Cruz, were here to guide me ...

Santa Cruz Bicycles commits to giving away $1 million to projects that increase access to trails Santa Cruz Bicycles is making a commitment to increasing access to quality trails. They are pledging to give $1 million over the next three years to trail development projects, local and national advocacy organizations, events, and programs geared toward ...

Bell Helmets is awarding a $100,000 grant to the trail network that earns the most votes in its annual Bell Built Grant program. Exchequer Mountain Bike Park in Mariposa, California, was chosen in the West bracket and Spirit Mountain Bike Park won the Central division. Now the East voting is live through May 24 and ...

Here at Dirt Rag we’re huge fans of classic steel hardtails, and today we got an introduction to a new brand with a unique business model that is giving back to the associations that support cycling. Advocate Cycles is a new venture from industry veteran Tim Krueger and its first product is the Hayduke, a ...

Cyclocross season may be winding down, but if you’ve got Holiday Fever, the only solution might be MORE COWBELL. Moots is happy to obliged with the annual release of Ti Sticks, a noisemaker made from excess or scrap tubing from Moots frames. The titanium tubes are cut and finished in just a way to provide ...

Voters in Steamboat Springs, Colo., overwhelming approved a new measure that will allocate a tax on lodging to building more trails and a new downtown riverfront promenade. Ballot Measure 2A was approved by 71 percent of the city’s voters, according to Steamboat Today.

By Melonee Hurt Steve Kasacek’s handiwork stretches from the woods of Maine to the remote hills of Arkansas. Most days his workspace is five miles deep in the woods somewhere. His home address consists of a storage unit and a mailbox. He has been known to sleep in his car or next to it, regularly ...

Do you use public lands? If you’re a mountain biker, then it’s likely that you do — especially if you live or ride west of the Mississippi. The Forest Service is proposing big changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA has two major functions. For one, it requires informed decision making regarding public ...

Editor’s Note: This feature first appeared in issue 210 of our print edition of Dirt Rag Magazine. Like what you see? Subscribe today to catch issue 212, in production now and soon to set sail. By Carolyne Whelan, illustrations by Stephen Haynes Anissa Lamare may be the only female downhill mountain biker in India. She ...

In issue #210 of Dirt Rag Magazine, we spoke with people of varying backgrounds about their experiences learning to mountain bike, build community among riders and use bikes as a tool of self-discovery and self-reliance. Bikes and wilderness both have proven positive effects on our psyche, from destressing after a hard day at work to ...

by David Tucker It’s late afternoon and the air has a bite to it. The heat of summer is gone, replaced by the angular and indirect sunlight of fall. Four grade-schoolers huddle together while their mate sits on his bike, poised above a miniature tabletop, waiting anxiously to drop in. “Can I send it?” he ...

In Montana, mountain bike advocates seek continued access to the Lionhead by David Tucker Halfway up the final climb to Targhee Pass, our progress grinds to a halt. From the high side of the trail, a ball of earth the size of a VW bus hovers suspended in midair, propped up by six 50-foot beams ...

If you mountain bike, you likely ride outside (unless you are extra special). While East of the Mississippi, public lands aren’t quite as common, they’re much more a part of the riding experience for our Western readers. The difference between public lands and state or county lands may sound confusing, because it is. We talked ...

The first bike shop job I ever had was at a place called Rob N Charlie’s in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One of my wrenching mentors there gave me good advice when I began working on an expensive bike for the first time: “Consider the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm.” That advice stuck with ...

International Mountain Bike Association (IMBA), SRAM Cycling Fund and Ohio University have teamed up to create a survey that aims to gain insight into how riders use both our local and destination trails, and how we interact with our advocacy groups. While mountain biking enthusiasts are often engaged in their communities, providing information about their ...

For perhaps the first time in modern history, government officials beyond the highest-ranking are household names in the United States. People who are not very involved in politics and invested in policy-making likely had no idea who was Administrator or Acting Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) prior to the recently-resigned Scott Pruitt. And ...

So many of us ride bikes past the pavement to escape into the magic of the woods, the desert, or the plains where our imaginations can still take off and our adult stresses relax. Most of us started that early exploration and adventure by reading books, whisked off to alternate realities where we could see ...

Mountain Bike Trailer Park is a regular column written by Uncle Dan that appears monthly on the Dirt Rag Interwebs. He dabbles in a variety of topics including racing, training, trails he loves and not taking himself too seriously, all with a big dash of humor. If you missed his previous columns, check them out here. ...

By Leslie Kehmeier  If there is one thing that government agencies and advocacy organizations are known for, it’s acronyms. I call it the alphabet soup. In my 15 years of combined experience working for both genres, I’ve been through my share of meetings filled with full sentences of fake words that actually mean important things. ...