Ramblings of an (ex) guide
A guide's perspective on riding solo vs guided in high country terrain.
A guide's perspective on riding solo vs guided in high country terrain.
Come join us for a fun, adventurous weekend in the beautiful Sonoran Desert. Ride fun, built-for-mountain-bikes singletrack and camp out under the stars.
Location: Pheonix, AZ, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: February - March/ October - November
Price: $1,545 pp
The Hiawatha is a rail trail in northern Idaho that follows the route of the historic mining railroad. The trail includes all kinds of incredible tunnels and trestles as it snakes through the Bitteroot Mountains.
Location: Coeur d'Alene, ID, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
We start our trip on the Arizona Trail which takes us through beautiful ponderosa forests on the plateau above the canyon. Two days in the forest brings us to the edge of the big ditch.
Location: Flagstaff, AZ, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: June
Price: $1,645 pp
The Black Hills rise several thousand feet above the prairie. Their deep blue lakes and rugged rock formations were sacred to the Western Sioux, as well as the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho.
Location: Rapid City, SD, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The Black Hills rise several thousand feet above the prairie. Their deep blue lakes and rugged rock formations were sacred to the Western Sioux, as well as the Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Arapaho.
Location: Rapid City, SD, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Our Moab Mountain Biking 101 trip is the perfect choice for those with a bit of mountain biking experience who want to see the best of Moab while improving their basic mountain biking skills.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Riding Type: Introductory
Prime Season: April - May / Sept - Oct
Price: $1,395 pp
Telluride to Durango is a superb mix of singletrack and doubletrack trails through the remote San Juan Mountains of Western Colorado. Also known as the "American Alps" the San Juans are stunning, their weather cool, their air clean, and the camping some of our most beautiful.
Location: Durango, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,745 pp
Have Bob Roll, Phil Liggett, and Paul Sherwin inspired you to climb high mountain passes and rip down incredible descents like a "grand prix motor car”? There is no need to travel to Europe for such a road biking experience.
Location: Grand Junction, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
There is very little elevation change so that both the climbing and descending are quite manageable. In addition to the biking, there are lots of opportunities for fly fishing, hiking and swimming along the way. And did we mention the wildlife?
Location: Jackson Hole, WY, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,745 pp
Grand Teton and Island Park is the perfect introduction to mountain biking. On this trip we will be riding through the meadows and valleys of Island Park just west of Grand Teton National Park.
Location: Jackson Hole, WY, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,745 pp
By now you must have heard of it. The famous Fruita area trails including the rip-roaring loops above the Colorado River, Rabbit Valley, and 18 Road. These trails were created through the teamwork of local cyclists, the Bureau of Land Management and Over the Edge Sports.
Location: Grand Junction, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: April - May / September - October
Price: $1,645 pp
If you are a singletrack aficionado (you've done Sun Valley, Brian Head and even our Colorado Singletrack) and you STILL want more, it's time to head to Crested Butte. Bigger peaks, taller wildflowers and more singletrack than you can ride in an entire summer.
Location: Crested Butte, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Colorado Singletrack is a high alpine, truly backcountry, cycling adventure. Riding alpine singletrack above tree line with stunning 360-degree views, we'll travel into the way back for a mountain bike experience unique to Colorado's high country.
Location: Durango, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Expert
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Our Umpqua River Trail trip includes some of the best singletrack mountain biking we ride anywhere in the country. The trail is truly the land of milk and honey: smooth, perfect trail tread with excellent traction undulating through vast and diverse forests of mountain hemlock, western cedar.
Location: Medford, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: June - September
Price: $1,645 pp
You really can't appreciate a stand of giant redwood trees by simply driving through them. These trees are magnificent and awe inspiring, and one of the best ways to see them is by bike. Our Redwood National Park itinerary is one of our best family bike trips yet.
Location: Brooking, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,645 pp
While our guides have been riding the Oakridge area for decades it’s taken nearly that long for us to secure the permits to guide you in this mountain bike paradise. Finally, we can share this special place nestled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains.
Location: Eugene, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
On this guided mountain biking trip, we travel through the Mt. Hood National Forest to the east of the giant peak itself to ride some of the best mountain bike trails in Oregon. The singletrack trails in this forest are famous for a reason.
Location: Hood River, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The Methow Valley in northern Washington state is a really special place to ride your mountain bike. The rivers are at about 2,000 feet and the ridge tops are at about 7,000 feet and in between there is all kinds of awesome rolling, climbing, zooming world class singletrack trails.
Location: Wenatchee, WA, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
On this trip we ride through the incredible country between Mount Adams and Mount St. Helens. These massive volcanoes are surrounded by beautiful old growth forests with great, buff, singletrack trails weaving through them.
Location: Hood River, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Bicycling Magazine chose the Crater Lake Loop as one of its top ten rides. It is in a beautiful and practically undiscovered part of southwestern Oregon. The lake was created when Mt. Mazama erupted over 7,000 years ago and the resulting crater slowly filled with water.
Location: Medford, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
Completed in 1989, The Centennial Trail (CT) was developed to celebrate the centennial of South Dakota’s statehood. It traverses a geologic uplift out of the expansive western plains, which is the Black Hills.
Location: Rapid City, SD, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate - Advanced
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,545 pp
This road biking tour has been a dream of ours for quite some time. Imagine cruising through Yellowstone National Park on our road bikes! You will be seeing the wonderful scenery and having great wildlife sightings as we pedal along.
Location: Bozeman, MT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
Ennis, Montana is the gateway for this inspiring guided bike adventure. Our route takes us along the top of the Gravelly Range northwest of Yellowstone into the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest.
Location: Bozeman, MT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Beartooth Pass is astounding and the perfect addition to road riding in Yellowstone National Park to make an advanced challenging road tour. We will be cruising through the park in the late summer. Hopefully this will insure some incredible wildlife sightings right from your bike.
Location: WY/ MT, USA
Duration: 6-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
Ennis, Montana, where fly fishing rules, is the gateway for this great mountain biking adventure. Riding into the Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, our route takes us along the top of the Gravelly Range northwest of Yellowstone.
Location: Bozeman, MT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Join Western Spirit on this incredible five-day & four-night guided bike ride through a stunning mix of mountains and desert. Beginning in the quintessential alpine setting of Telluride, Colorado we will ride up to the Uncompahgre Plateau with views of the San Miguel and La Sal mountain ranges.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: June / August - September
Price: $1,645 pp
The mountain biking in Sedona can be best described as technical, scenic, and downright fun! The trails around Sedona were built by long ago native residents, wildlife, and more recently outdoor enthusiasts like us.
Location: Sedona, AZ, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: March - April / October - November
Price: $1,645 pp
Join Western Spirit on this incredible five-day and four-night guided mountain bike ride on some of Arizona's best trails. Conveniently located between the Bradshaw Mountains and the high desert of northern Arizona lies miles of singletrack.
Location: Prescott, AZ, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: May - June / September - October
Price: $1,645 pp
This trip is the perfect sampling of what Moab has to offer! This is Moab riding at its best. Wonderful purpose-built flow trails interspersed with super yummy meals prepared by your guides in the great outdoors—gives you more time to chill and take in the view.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: April - May / September - October
Price: $1,545 pp
Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Adams and Mount Hood are all on the menu for this road biking tour through the central peaks of Oregon and Washington State. We begin near Mount St. Helens and then travel through Mount Rainier National Park.
Location: Hood River, OR, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
Ride your road bike in the mecca of mountain biking! While we all know about Moab's legendary trails, our roads are equally epic. We'll base out of one of our favorite downtown hotels, dine at our favorite restaurants and most importantly, take you on our favorite road rides.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: March - April
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
Our Glacier National Park road biking tour is the absolute best way to experience Glacier. The riding is unmatched in its beauty and diversity.
Location: Whitefish, MT, USA
Duration: N/A
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
The whoop-dee-doos will make you laugh out loud and the technical sections will challenge your mountain bike handling skills on the famous Kokopelli Trail. It offers mountain bikers some great desert riding in route from Fruita, Colorado to Moab, Utah.
Location: Grand Junction, CO, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: April-May and September - October
Price: $1,645 pp
The vast open skies and magical rock formations are best appreciated from the saddle of your mountain bike.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 6-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: March - May / September - October
Price: $1,745 pp
Located in the most remote district of Canyonlands National Park, the Maze, unique in the world, was made famous by Edward Abbey's The Monkey Wrench Gang. The vast open skies and magical rock formations are best appreciated from the saddle of your mountain bike.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: March - May / September - October
Price: $1,645 pp
On this supported mountain bike trip from Telluride to Moab, you will experience both the majestic mountains of Colorado and the intricate deserts of the West.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 6-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: June and August - September
Price: $1,745 pp
Smooth trails of decomposed granite and a mountain biker friendly forest service have combined to create some of the best riding we have found anywhere on the planet.
Location: Ketchum, ID, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Sun Valley, Idaho remains one of the best kept secrets in the mountain biking world. Smooth trails of decomposed granite and a mountain biker friendly forest service have combined to create some of the best riding we have found anywhere on the planet.
Location: Ketchum, ID, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
On September 14, 1805 Lewis and Clark reached the Bitterroot Mountains west of Lolo Pass on the border of what is now Montana and Idaho.
Location: Missoula, MT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The Hiawatha is a rail trail in northern Idaho that follows the route of the historic mining railroad. The trail includes all kinds of incredible tunnels and trestles as it snakes through the Bitteroot Mountains.
Location: Coeur d'Alene, ID, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The riding on this trip is quite gentle with very little elevation change, making it a great opportunity to learn about singletrack. We avoid the crowds along the rim of the canyon and camp instead in more remote areas which we have all to ourselves.
Location: Flagstaff, AZ, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: June
Price: $1,645 pp
This trip is designed especially for teenagers who have already have experience with singletrack and are looking to step up their riding skills in a fun family setting!
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,645 pp
Do you want to have an adventure in one of the largest, most remote, and least visited national parks in the lower 48? Would you like to ride your bike through the beautiful and rugged Chihuahuan Desert and explore a region with over one million acres of public land?
Location: Midland, TX, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: Febuary - April
Price: $1,745 pp
Just south of Zion National Park lies the famed Gooseberry Mesa. The Bureau of Land Management has done an incredible job on this trail system. Sections of fun slickrock are intermixed with twisty, turny singletrack trails through the juniper, pinons, ponderosa and manzanita.
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: March - April / October
Price: $1,645 pp
On this spectacular road biking tour, we will visit Bryce National Park as we cycle along the northern border of the Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument, then over Boulder Mountain to Capitol Reef National Park and beyond.
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: June - September
Price: Contact our Office for Dates and Pricing
The riding varies from winding singletrack trails to a ride in the van! After four days of camping and riding we'll arrive under Zion's 2,000-foot sandstone walls!
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,695 pp
Our Bryce to Zion guided mountain bike tour has it all: two national parks, both single and doubletrack riding, with beautiful camping.
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: June - September
Price: $1,695 pp
This trip is cream of the crop singletrack trails, with a diversity of riding that will astound you. The journey starts near the lava fields that have formed the high Markugunt Plateau and Navajo Lake, a crystal blue jewel tucked in an aspen covered valley.
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The Grand Staircase has been called a "world class view a minute." And it's true. Our bike tour takes us through the incredible Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument. We begin at the wonderful Boulder Mountain Lodge in the tiny town of Boulder, Utah.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory
Prime Season: April - May / September - October
Price: $1,745 pp
Yes, it is true, this supported mountain bike trip has a clear natural hot spring at every camp! We begin our trip in Ketchum, Idaho and bike to the edge of the Sawtooth Wilderness Area.
Location: Ketchum, ID, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: July - August
Price: $1,745 pp
A world-class trail system in the Bradshaw Mountain foothills of central Arizona, the Black Canyon Trail has been stretched out to nearly 80 miles of flowy purpose-built singletrack that just begs for a multi-day trip.
Location: Pheonix, AZ, USA
Duration: 3-Days
Ability: Advanced
Prime Season: February - March/ October - November
Price: $1,345 pp
The famous and controversial Bears Ears National Monument was created to protect the Ancestral Puebloan ruins of the Cedar Mesa area in the southeastern corner of Utah. The area was home to over 10,000 people over 1000 years ago and includes fantastic views of the complex geology and amazing ruins.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: April - May & Sept - Oct
Price: $1,445 pp
In addition to sections of the Arizona Trail, our mountain bike trip on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon includes a visit to Grand Canyon National Park and the highly acclaimed Rainbow Rim Trail. .
Location: St. George, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: June - September
Price: $1,645 pp
The White Rim Trail is THE classic Moab mountain bike trip. With jaw-dropping gorgeous views, slot canyon hikes, and ancient ruins, this is a mountain bike ride to get you off the grid and into the vast open spaces of Canyonlands National Park.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: March - April and September - October
Price: $1,345 pp
The famous and controversial Bears Ears National Monument was created to protect the Ancestral Puebloan ruins of the Cedar Mesa area in the southeastern corner of Utah. The area was home to over 10,000 people over 1000 years ago and includes fantastic views of the complex geology and amazing ruins.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 4-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: Apr - May | Sept - Oct
Price: $1,445 pp
The Bears Ears family guided mountain bike trip takes us to one of the more remote mountain ranges in the Southwest, the Abajos. This range is just south of the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park.
Location: Moab, UT, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: May - June
Price: $1,645 pp
During this trip, we will have the opportunity to visit some of their dwellings which still stand. The riding is on dirt roads through both alpine and desert terrain.
Location: Moab, Utah, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: May - June / August - September
Price: $1,645 pp
One hundred miles of singletrack trails called the Maah Daah Hey connects the northern and southern units of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, outside of Medora, North Dakota. Part of the Missouri River Plateau, the Badlands of North Dakota were formed by thousands of small streams working their way through hundreds of feet of sediment over millions of years.
Location: Bismarck, ND, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate - Advanced
Prime Season: September
Price: $1,645 pp
Black Hills National Forest includes lots of fun singletrack trails and dirt roads rolling through spruce groves and grassy meadows.
Location: Rapid City, SD, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Intermediate
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,645 pp
The Black Hills of South Dakota rise above the plains and create a cool summer environment, perfect for riding the twisty turny terrain found here. Black Hills National Forest includes lots of fun singletrack trails and dirt roads rolling through spruce groves and grassy meadows.
Location: Rapid City, SD, USA
Duration: 5-Days
Ability: Introductory - Intermediate
Prime Season: June - August
Price: $1,645 pp
We hope this finds you in good health during this very challenging time for our world. Although our primary focus is on the health and wellbeing of our staff and communities, we are still planning for and designing backcountry bike trips on our public lands.
So, you may think the most significant, most rewarding part of being a mountain bike guide is getting paid to ride bikes. While that is pretty awesome, in my opinion, the most fulfilling part of the job by far is helping others enjoy the sport. Guiding is a 24/7, all hands on deck, gig. We’re used to fixing flats, diving headfirst into the cooler to grab pickle juice when someone starts cramping, running after tents through the desert (that may not have been properly staked down) [...]
The era of experience is alive and well. More and more people are devoting their time and resources toward meaningful experiences versus owning more physical stuff. Look no further than your social media community, and most likely, you will witness most engagements focused on experiences. People are interested in pushing their boundaries by doing new activities like hiking or mountain biking, achieving sought after goals that test their endurance, or visiting our beautiful public lands. But why? We put our heads together and came up with some ideas about why [...]
Report details visitor spending, job support According to a Department of the Interior (DOI) press release sent out Thursday, visitors to national parks contributed $40 billion to the U.S. economy and supported 329,000 jobs in hotels, restaurants, transportation, and recreation. The annual National Park Service report showed that, in 2018, more than 318 million park visitors spend $20.2 billion in communities within a 60-mile radius of a national park. More than 268,000 of the 329,000 jobs supported by visitor spending are also in gateway communities. The report also showed [...]
Exposing young kids and teens to our national parks, national forests, and to the wilderness is extremely beneficial.
View of Washer Woman formation on the White Rim Trail, Canyonlands National Park, Moab, Utah. There are very few established mountain bike routes that are as well known as the White Rim. For good reason, this iconic ride has been in the hearts and minds of mountain bikers for decades. But why? What draws riders here season after season? Here is a quick history to put this biking legacy into context. The National Park system has been one of the keystone aspects of land conservation in the [...]
The following blog post is from a Guest on a trip. We wanted to feature it as it answers a few questions that we get quite a bit. We hope you enjoy. My family is very choosey about vacations. As our three boys get older, it is harder and harder to find a time when we can all be together. Between school, college, sailing, skiing, and all the other activities we do over the year, finding time for a bike trip was a serious challenge. When we settled on a [...]
Important Public Land Designations: Wilderness and National Monuments In Part 1 of our public land series we clarified the three major federal land managers: US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and National Park Service. All three of these land management agencies manage different types of lands within their jurisdictions. In the forest and on the BLM most of their lands are usually open to multiple uses—that means they are available for harvesting trees, grazing cows, mining, and/or recreation of all types. But both agencies and the park service also [...]
One of the most-asked questions from people about going on a Western Spirit trip is what to bring. So, I sat down for a few minutes to write down some tips. These come from my personal experience guiding trips. They are helpful for me and hopefully helpful for you also!
Every bike needs love every now and again. So I wanted to fill you in on a few things you can do to keep you and your bike happy and running smoothly. Before every ride. 1 - Check your tires - Checking the pressure in your tires is something that you should do before every ride. Not only will it make your bike ride nice, It will also help prevent pinch flats and keep your tires from feeling all squirmy in corners. Dont know what pessure to pump them too? Look [...]
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just need to step away from my regularly scheduled programming to get some perspective. My life is busy and filled with family, work, and all kinds of responsibilities. It can be a challenge to keep up, and even some of the things that I love can start to feel like burdens and obligations. There’s no better cure for the everyday doldrums than a vacation. And I think the best ones are on two wheels—on the dirt. A Fun Challenge Whether you bring friends with you [...]