THE DIRT ROAD
Blog
RIDES
Topics
@TheDirtyRoads
Stay In The Loop…
Gravel Riding Around Aspen and the Roaring Fork Valley
When I ride in the Roaring Fork Valley some part of my mind wanders to Hunter S. Thompson tapping away, gritted teeth around a cigarette holder, crucifying Nixon for the violent, lying, paranoid state he’s creating. Enough current history though, because when I ride here the beauty and the effort pulls me out of my head pretty fast.
Strada Sporche, Dunckley Park and the Col d’Coal
Utilizing the same start and the same finish, these three rides provide different distance options ranging from the Col d'Coal's 47 miles to the Strade Sporche's 106 miles (all day long!). All of the rides leave and return to Steamboat Springs via 13th...
The Gravel Gruel
The Gravel GruelThe Gravel Gruel is an all time favorite here at The Dirty Roads. Named after the legendary road ride called the Gore Gruel which takes in Rabbit Ears Pass, Gore Pass and Yellow Jacket Pass; the Gravel Gruel starts with the same ascent up Rabbit Ears...
MULTI-DAY RIDES
Colorado Route: The North and the South
Each portion includes the same wide open backcountry splendor broken up with bursts of civilization and as much of Colorado’s best gravel road riding as we could splice together.
California Park and the Little Snake
The tour of California Park and the Little Snake River is a Northwest Colorado classic that takes in a series of sparsely traveled dirt roads through Routt and Moffat counties with a brief excursion into southern Wyoming before returning to Steamboat Springs through...
The Tour of the Flat Tops
The Tour of the Flat Tops is a multi-day tour that provides a complete circumnavigation of the Flat Tops mountains in northwest Colorado. The long loose climbs and descents, the rough forest roads, hike-a-bike section and generally demanding conditions found on this...
THE COLORADO ROUTE
The Colorado Route: Trip Report #3
The kind of hunger that you can build up after a couple of days of bike touring is the stuff of legends. I like to joke that I have to count my fingers after I eat in case I need to hack one back up and have it re-attached.
The Colorado Route: Trip Report #2
Marshall Pass is part of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and when I saw other cyclist I realized that I hadn’t seen another cyclist since Silt and was all sorts of excited but they had obviously seen a lot of other cyclist and just kept rolling along. I like...
The Colorado Route: Trip Report #1
While I have ridden the majority of the Colorado Route before in bits and pieces over the years dating back to my first ever bike tour in 1992, I had never attempted to ride the whole route in one go before until this year. Riding the route all at once has given me a...
TDR STANDARDS
UNIVERSAL
Schwalbe G-One Bite Gravel Tire
While the G-One Bite doesn’t shine at any one application it does a lot of things well.
TRP Spyre Brake Calipers
The Spyres are light, simple and reliable; and those three words are words of praise.
At the Time We Just Called It County Road Riding
It was the spring of 1998, my roommate and close friend Doug Demusz had already been putting in some base miles on the frozen backroads around our hometown of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I had modified a Trek 770 road touring bike with a flat bar and some lower gearing and installed a set of the original Moots Mounts, which enabled the use of cantilever brakes.
Winter Accessory Guide
The important thing to remember when dressing for winter conditions is that the clothes don’t make you warm, you make you warm and the clothing is there just to hold it in.
The Climbing Index
Any time that we ride or plot out a new route there is a ratio of miles traveled to feet of vertical gained that we always pay attention to and would like to share with you. A ride that exceeds 1000ft of elevation gain per 10 miles traveled qualifies as "climby". Any...
Adventure Bike/Monstercross Conversion
If I had to I’d say to make it a monstercross it needs to have drop bars and to be an adventure bike it needs rack mounts.
Quality vs. Quantity
We here at the Dirty Roads are committed to bring you the very best rides and routes that we know and ride. We are not trying to be a clearinghouse for every possible dirty road ride that could be put together, but instead trying to provide you with the best, or at...
Kenda Happy Medium Gravel Tire
Kenda Happy Medium 700x40c I am a man who used to have a serious tire fetish. I would show up to mountain bike races with a trunk full of tires always trying to put on the perfect tire combination. I had tires for fast and dry courses, tires for loose and rough...
The Joseph Kuosac 48cm Handlebar or the JK 48’s
48cm road handlebars are hard to find. Most road style handlebars in that width are flared at the drops and the hoods are a much more standard 44cm or 42cm width. As a rider who spends a lot of time on the hoods I found the flared bars a little disappointing despite...
Bike Setup
The last few years have seen an explosion of new bicycles and bicycle equipment aimed squarely at riding dirt roads. While most of these bikes are called “gravel bikes” and are meant for “gravel grinding” we shy away from that term since some of our road...