Best New Trips in the World: Biking, Kayaking and Rafting in the Bitterroot Mountains of Idaho and Montana

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present Idaho and Montana. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

IDAHO + MONTANA: Bitterroot Bonanza

As the co-owner of ROW Adventures, Peter Grubb has spent the better part of the past three decades scouting trips around the world. But until recently, he had all but ignored his own backyard, the Bitterroot Mountains straddling the Montana-Idaho border. He wasn’t the only one—very few outfitters lead trips here. And yet, the 10,000-foot peaks’ boulder fields and U-shaped valleys are loaded with lakes, hot springs, wildlife (lynx, bald eagles, wolves), and a rich history (Native Americans, fur traders, and Lewis and Clark all came through here). On ROW’s new Bitterroots Multisport trip, you’ll cycle the 50-mile Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes along the old Milwaukee Railroad line, kayak an alpine lake, raft the Clark Fork River’s Class III rapids, and bike over train trestles spanning deep canyons on the Hiawatha Trail.

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Best New Trips in the World: Bike and Camp in Colorado's Hovenweep National Monument

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present Colorado. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

COLORADO: Alone With the Ancients

More than six million tourists flocked to the Four Corners region in 2008, making a beeline for the sandstone rock formations and ancestral Puebloan dwellings at places like Arches National Park and Mesa Verde. Hovenweep National Monument, meanwhile, saw just 25,411 visitors. “Hovenweep’s one of the more remote areas left in the country,” says Western Spirit Cycling president Ashley Korenblat. This spring Korenblat’s Moab-based outfit will lead the first commercial biking trip to the monument, which lies some 70 miles east of Cortez, Colorado, at the end of a circuitous country road. Once a major center for the ancestral Puebloans, Hovenweep’s sprawling collection of ruins doubles as a giant outdoor classroom for Native American history buffs. The trip is a kid-friendly affair, with interactive workshops along with double- and singletrack cruising.

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Best New Trips in the World: Surf, Hike, and Mountain Bike Pristine Sri Lanka

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present Sri Lanka. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

SRI LANKA: MIA No More

After the tsunami of 2004 and the resolution of a decades-long civil war, Sri Lanka is finally starting to look like its old self: a peaceful destination where surf lineups are nonexistent despite world-class waves and centuries-old tea estates are lined with mountain bike–ready trails. “The silver lining of the civil war is that the land and wildlife have remained untouched,” says Lisa Bolger, trip coordinator for Access Trips, one of the very few outfitters leading excursions to the Indian Ocean island this coming year. Access’s new itinerary combines surfing at Hikkaduwa (Sri Lanka’s answer to Costa Rica’s Tamarindo—minus the tourists), hiking 7,362-foot Adam’s Peak (considered sacred by four local religions), and mountain biking the same trails that tea farmers have been using since Sri Lanka first began producing the crop 250 years ago.

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Best New Trips in the World: Bike and Hike Southern New Zealand

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present New Zealand. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

NEW ZEALAND: All-Access Kiwiland

The North Island has the Bay of Islands and the best surfing; the South Island trumpets Queenstown and world-class hiking. For decades, New Zealand’s two halves have been vying for the country’s title of premier travel destination. But Active New Zealand just gave the South Island a major one-up: the first guided hiking and bicycle crossing from coast to coast. For this 13-day trip, the high-octane outfitter has chosen the wildest route possible, using little-known tracks (Kiwi for trails) and New Zealand’s excellent hut system, which offers everything from bare-bones shelters to cushy crash pads with private bunks and kitchens.

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Best New Trips in the World: Bike France's Pyrenees

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present France. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

France: Tour des Pyrenees

If the gods were cyclists, you can rest assured that there would be more mountains like the Pyrenees. The 11,000-foot peaks separating France from Spain are laced with hundreds of miles of paved roads winding past medieval villages and stretches of high-alpine wilderness. For the past half century, cycling fanatics have been completing the Raid Pyrénéen, a hundred-hour cyclathon across the range on a fixed course. But other than Raid crews (and, of course, the annual swarm of Tour de France riders) the Pyrenees are mostly crowd free. “One of the big advantages to this area is that there are very few cars,” says Loren Siekman, owner of Discover France. Now, DF has developed an outfitted version of the Pyrenees crossing, using a different route and a saner, weeklong pace. The traverse begins near chilly Atlantic waters in Biarritz.

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Best New Trips in the World: Biking Through British Columbia's Myra Canyon

For our annual Adventure Travel issue, we scoured the globe to find the 25 Best New Trips in the World for 2010, complete with a Best Trips photo gallery. Today, we present British Columbia. The world's far corners are now well within reach.

British Columbia: The BC High Line

Anxious to protect its silver and gold stores, Canada created a railway through southern British Columbia in the early 1900s to keep certain stake-claiming international neighbors at bay. The resulting 250-mile-long Kettle Valley Railway crosses three mountain ranges and dozens of canyons—and since ceasing operation in 1972 has been gradually converted into a rail trail. This year one of the most scenic portions, Myra Canyon, was completed. Monashee Adventure Tours’ three-day cycling loop will link Myra’s 18 trestle bridges and two tunnels with the former mining towns of Penticton and Summerland.

Photograph Courtesy of Monashee Adventure Tours

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Urban Adventure: Cycling the Berlin Wall 20 Years After Its Fall

Aside from the hum of spokes and the rattle of a loose fender, the forested hinterlands are quiet. The cycling trail I follow, dubbed the Berliner Mauerweg (Wall Way), often utilizes the “death strip’s” patrol roads alongside the notorious Wall—the bitter, iconic emblem of the Cold War. A mere two decades in time separate this pleasant bike journey from attack dogs nipping at my pedals and a hail of machine gun fire.

Berlin, once ground zero for testy spats between capitalism and communism, is celebrating twenty years since the dreaded “Antifascist Protection Rampart” (as East German officials called it) came crashing down. Berlin has always known how to party despite being in the middle of some rather horrific turns in history. Because of this, Berliners are pretty good at remembering, too. Which partly explains the 100-mile-long Mauerweg.—Text and photographs by Bruce Willey

Lance Armstrong and Other Top Cyclists Race Onto the Big Screen

As cyclists—including Lance Armstrong (pictured)—dealt with the 100-mile trail and 14,000-vertical-feet climbs for the annual Leadville 100 mountain bike race this past August, cameras followed to catch all the drama in the former mining town in Colorado. Now, Race Across the Sky: Leadville Trail 100 is set to debut on October 22 at 8pm EST in select cities. Along with the film, all audiences will be privy to a pre-recorded panel discussion with Armstrong (who, of course, won the race by nearly a half an hour), his coach Chris Carmichael, six-time Leadville 100 champion Davie Wiens, and other elite and amateur cyclists. They'll tell you how to use their personal, race-proven techniques to overcome every challenge, whether its the clock, the weather or a pesky 2 mile-high elevation. —Laura Buckley; Photograph courtesy of Race Across the Sky

For Tuscany's Old-School L'Eroica Bike Race, Leave Your Lycra at Home

Post by contributing photographer Dan Patitucci of PatitucciPhoto

In Italy, a bike race is a regular occurrence, for races are everywhere, every weekend. But each fall since 1997, Tuscany’s Chianti Region is host to a special kind of race, L'Eroica.

Italian roads are typically silky smooth pavement represented as yellow lines on maps. But the map’s white lines, or strade bianche in Italian, are dirt roads, sometimes worn smooth, sometimes hideously bumpy and potholed – and most certainly always full of surprises. These are the roads for L’Eroica, the same roads used for the professional Eroica course in the spring. But instead of carbon fiber, lycra, and race radios, the L’Eroica is a game of steel frames, lugs, wool, and hairnets. It is a celebration of the sport, its rich history, and of the heroic efforts made by those who have raced in what may be the most grueling of all sports.

We decided to spend the afternoon at the finish line enjoying the many characters who came to participate. See our photos here >>

Read a feature on another famous Italian bike race, the Maratona dles Dolomites, here >>

Find a biking tour with our ratings of 200 travel operators here >>

Climate Ride Kicks Off Saturday - Cyclist Pedal 300 Miles From NYC to DC

This Saturday (September 26) the second annual Brita Climate Ride will roll away from lower Manhattan en route to our nation’s capitol. The five-day, 300-mile cycling tour will help raise money and awareness for climate change education through organizations such as Focus the Nation and Clean Air – Cool Planet. It will also raise hope for a future powered by renewable energy and a green economy.

Last year I pedaled the inaugural Climate Ride from NYC to D.C. for the first charity ride of its kind. The brainchild of two former Backroads biking guides, the event ran smoother than a well tuned S-Works. And it did not disappoint, either as a fully-supported bike tour through beautiful countryside or an inspiring message for change.