gravel riding

gravel riding

Gravel Ride the PNW

Get off the pavement and into backcountry on gravel roads across the Pacific Northwest by Kevin Max I climbed the last hundred feet out of my saddle, my bike tires spitting up a gravel road with Ponderosa pines towering overhead. I had gotten used to the feeling of pleasure and pain commingled in my body. Wide vistas of Idaho’s Pioneer Mountains narrowed to the width of the gravel road as I pushed up the last big climb of Rebecca’s Private Idaho, the brainchild of cycling legend and Ketchum, Idaho, resident Rebecca Rusch. Nothing seemed harder. Nothing seemed more gratifying than this, my introduction to gravel riding.    Gravel, in its forms of speech, has described scratchy voices and roads to dead-end residences. Now, gravel is an honorific describing a burgeoning trend in cycling and some of the best ways to experience the Pacific Northwest through either competitive races, group rides…