Rough Stuff Cycling Northwest

For the last few years my friends and I have been enjoying a less common style of cycling, long day rides or overnight camping in National Forests and other public lands.  The dirt roads there tend to lead to better views and have lower traffic compared to most road riding destinations, and allow for longer days with less technical riding than the popular mountain bike routes.  A 50-100 mile day crossing two or three mountain passes and riding along ridge lines with nice views is energizing for me in a way that no other cycling is.

The name Rough Stuff Cycling is borrowed from the Rough Stuff Fellowship in the UK.  I like the term and seem to enjoy the same type of riding that they advocate.

I’ve been documenting these rides on my personal blog for years.  This summer I realized that it would be nice to have friends and acquitances sharing their routes too, and to collect all of them into one space.  That is why this blog was born.

I want to open this blog up to contributors around the Northwest US (I think we’ll define that as OR, WA, BC, ID, MT) to share their favorite routes and trip reports, reviews of gear useful for such riding, and anything else related to this small niche of cycling.  I’m going to kick it off with a couple of recent and favorite trip reports, and fill in extra “primer” type information over the next winter.

If you have any comments or suggestions on the direction for this blog I’d love to hear them.

-Alex Wetmore