The Dangerbird

I made a few resolutions for 2026. First, I wanted to spend more time on my bike exploring new places. Second, I wanted to spend more time with my buddy Neil. We started planning our first bikepacking trip a few months ago and settled on the Dangerbird route in southern New Mexico. We figured it would be a safe bet for warm weather in February and neither of us had set foot in the state. I flew to Atlanta and spent the night catching up with Neil, Meredith, Caroline and Andrew. It’s hard to believe that Caroline is headed to college next year and Andrew is right behind her. I remember the day they were both born like it was yesterday and they have both become such peaceful and loving young adults. It such a joy to watch them thrive.

Neil and I flew to El Paso the next day and took the Greyhound bus to Las Cruces. We hopped on a free city bus to the bike shop and picked up our rental rigs. They set us up with two great Trek Roscoe mountain bikes and our bag system worked pretty well but not perfectly. One thing I’ve learned about bikepacking is that you have to get pretty creative when setting up your system on an unfamiliar bike. We didn’t have fork mounts so we improvised with electric tape and plumbing clamps. I couldn’t find a place to mount a water bottle cage so I stuffed bottles into the back of my jersey. It’s not always pretty and sometimes your spork has to ride on your handlebar, but you will eventually figure out a way to pack four days of gear onto a rental bike. We were ready to roll in just under an hour and then got a good night’s sleep for our big first day on the loop trail.

The first day started out perfectly. It was a nippy 35 degrees when we rolled out of town and hooked up with our first section of flowing single track trails just north of town. The views were amazing and the bikes were holding up great – with one exception. My seat post bracket that holds my saddle bag in place kept slipping off my seat and slamming into my rear tire. That’s not a lot of fun when you are scrambling down a steep rocky descent with 55 lbs of gear and bike. After trying to rig it a few times on the fly, we had to stop and disassemble the bike seat to diagnose the problem. It turns out that I had had ridden through the plastic coating on the bike saddle rails and the bracket was slipping on the exposed metal. Fortunately, we packed a great set of tools and gear and I had the idea of wrapping electrical tape around the rails to give the brackets something to sink into. It worked like a charm and we were soon back on our way. I took a weeklong bike mechanics course last month for this exact moment. I wanted to have the skills to help myself when I’m out in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of unwieldy gear. It worked! I was feeling pretty proud of myself.

We got back on the trail and wound up back down in the valley along the Rio Grande along wide dirt roads through huge pistachio and pecan tree farms. At 35 miles in, we stopped for a really unhealthy but delicious burger and fries at the Blue Moon bar in tiny Radium Springs and the site of a former Confederate Army camp called Fort Selden. After lunch, we turned off the road for our first true taste of what makes this course so famous. The Dangerbird was developed by local mountain bikers but the original course left many in tears as they got tired of pushing their bikes through deep sand and over impossibly rocky climbs. They changed the course a bit a few years ago to attract more cyclists but I can confirm that it can still quickly bring you to tears.

As soon as we left the road, we had some seriously steep and technical climbs and we had to get off to push our bikes for hours. It was slow going but as the sun was setting we were treated to some pretty sweet colors and cool breezes. The silence out here is deafening. When I would stop to rest, it would hit me like a beautiful wave. There weren’t any sounds around at all. Just my own heart pounding in my chest and that little familiar voice asking me why I don’t just buy a nice travel van and stop all this suffering? Here’s why – as soon as the sun fully sunk beneath the hills, the stars came out and dropped on us like a blanket of shimmering diamonds. We mounted our bikes lights and donned our puffies and it was like a whole new ride. We blew past our intended overnight stop and pushed into the small village of Hatch for the night.

Around 8:30 PM and after over eleven hours on the bike, we rolled into Hatch without a plan and stopped at the Ice Box bar looking a bit ragged. Ok – a whole lot ragged after a really hard 75 miles of trail. A quick Google search revealed exactly zero hotels in town but just as we were headed inside the bar, a friendly woman came outside and asked us if we were looking for a place to stay. She was wearing a small corsage of twenty dollar bills pinned to her chest and introduced us to the bartender. He walked us across the street to a small gravel patch under a covered driveway. Ok – we were hoping for a cute Airbnb but it was a safe place to crash with clean water from the spigot. He refused money but asked for a 5 star Google review instead. We happily pitched our tents and grabbed a pizza in the bar. It was karaoke night and our friendly angel with the cash corsage was the music master for the evening. It sort of explained it but I stopped trying to figure it out and just enjoyed the music. My favorite performer was a woman singing her heart out and swaying to the tunes with her dog in her arms.

You just can’t buy awesome experiences like this. I was in the middle of nowhere with my best buddy and being treated to the kindness of strangers. We had a big pizza and a few laughs with the locals. I felt really present and lucky to be here. We intentionally didn’t plan every aspect of this trip for this exact reason. When you roll into town like two wet dogs someone is bound to help you out. We crashed out hard that night and slept through most of the trains, trucks and coyotes trying to keep us awake. It was a great day but we had a big climb waiting for us in the morning.