How Electric Mountain Bikes has Unlocked a New 300-Mile Route Across Death Valley
The following written content from Andy Cochrane
There are few feelings I despise more than waking up and not being able to feel my toes. Yet, that’s the ante you occasionally must up if you plan to tackle an epic.
When we woke on our second morning in Death Valley, temps were hovering in the low 20s, frost covered my sleeping bag, and the batteries on our e-mountain bikes had shut off because they, like us, aren’t fond of the cold. On the plus side, the sun would soon rise and we knew morale would spike with it. Making coffee with dawn views of the Racetrack, a phenomenon where rocks almost magically move by themselves, wasn’t bad either.
The five of us, a riffraff crew from Durango, CO, Mammoth, CA, and Jackson, WY, had come together to test a new electric bike from Specialized, the Turbo Levo SL. Long miles of washboard dirt roads, loose rocky climbs, and empty basin and range country was on the docket. The new SL weighs in at just 33 pounds, not much more than most non-electric mountain bikes, and we hoped it would be the ideal tool to unlock a new route, using the pedal-assist to get up the biggest climbs, without a huge weight penalty.
Over the course of the week we learned a lot—and probably set a world record for distance ridden on e-bikes with the power off, which I imagine we’ll hold for a while. [Spoiler alert] In the end the bikes did their job admirably, adding enough juice to climb 5,000-foot passes while meandering through the largest national park in the lower 48. Linking together a trio of resupply spots, we rode a loop that probably isn’t possible with normal pedal bikes, outside of the fittest riders in the world. Here’s how we did it. Read more from Men’s Journal.
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