Riding Gravel

The first thing to know about the relatively recent trend of riding your bike off-road is that it’s not new. People have been riding whatever bike they had off road for centuries. That said, the availability of bikes with efficient geometry and fat tires have made riding long distances on unpaved roads easier and more fun than ever. Riding on unpaved roads is nicer because there are less cars and people, and they often lead to pretty scenery.

Getting Started

The easiest way to try out gravel is to get on your bike and ride it over some unpaved roads, whatever bike you already have is going to work for most of the roads that you can get to in your car! Don’t be afraid to take your bike a little bit off road, your bike will be fine and you will naturally go a little bit slower until you develop the bike handling skills that let you feel more comfortable going fast. You also don’t actually have to go fast at all to have fun.

Where should I go?

At the end of a paved road, there should be some gravel mixed with dirt that you can ride on. It’s probably best to start with places other people have gone before and you should use a few tools to leverage the knowledge of your fellow cyclists.

• Your Local Bike Shop is probably the best resource for easy and straightforward gravel routes to take. They will have some ideas of areas to check out and may even plan weekly or monthly group rides.
• If you have a Garmin Connect account because you have a GPS watch or bike computer, you can browse routes created by other Garmin users. As of early 2021, they are called “Courses” and a bit hidden in the Garmin Connect site. After logging on, expand the “Training” menu on the left column, then select “Courses”. Use the “Course Type” drop down to filter for gravel cycling and select the “Nearby Courses” to find routes that are where you want to go. You can send them right to your Garmin device, save them, or share a link.
• Use the “Find a Route” feature of Ride With GPS to discover bike routes near you; you will want to filter the routes with the “gravel” keyword, set the max distance, and area to search.
• In some areas, Gravelmap is an overlay of all unpaved roads onto a Google Maps base layer as well as routes that users have submitted along with photos. Browse around your area and use the “Segments” and “Routes” filters to discover roads for either an out-and-back or a loop.

What should I bring?

A bike, a bottle of water, a fully charged phone and idea of where you are going. In addition to Ride With GPS, and Garmin, GaiaGPS allows you to download and save maps to your phone if you end up being out of service area.