People hear “Climate Ride” and picture one thing: a long road ride. And sure, that’s where we started. But over the years we’ve built out a lineup that covers just about every way you might want to move through a beautiful place — road cycling, rail-trails, gravel, national parks, and hikes that have nothing to do with a bike at all. Whatever pace you ride (or walk) at, there’s a trip here for you. And now that we’ve got e-road and e-gravel bikes available to rent, “the terrain is too hard” isn’t really an excuse anymore — you can go a little farther, climb a little more, and still spend the day moving at the pace of a bicycle.
Here’s a look at what we run, and a few trips worth circling on your calendar.
Road Cycling
This is where Climate Ride got its start, and it’s still the heart of what we do: fully supported multi-day road rides through some of the most scenic corridors in the country (and a few outside it).
Door County, Wisconsin is a perfect example — quiet coastal roads, orchard country, and a stretch through car-free Washington Island that makes you remember why you fell in love with a bike in the first place.
Desert Trifecta takes road riding somewhere completely different: Death Valley, Valley of Fire, and Red Rock Canyon, back to back, in the best possible cycling weather the desert has to offer.
And if you want road cycling at its most ambitious, the Trans-Pyrenees Ride sends you coast to coast across Spain and France, over legendary mountain passes from Girona to San Sebastián.
South Dakota Black Hills & Badlands pairs rolling road miles with the region’s dramatic rock formations and historic monuments, and Glacier to Banff crosses two countries and two national parks — Glacier and Banff — with alpine scenery the whole way. Both are proof that road cycling and national park scenery aren’t mutually exclusive.
Looking further out, 2027 brings two brand-new international road trips. Our Arctic Circle, Norway ride takes you along the Arctic Coast from Tromsø to Svolvær — think fjords, midnight sun, and some of the most dramatic coastal scenery on the planet. And our new three-country Adriatic Ride crosses Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, stringing together Adriatic coastline, medieval old towns, and mountain passes across three distinct cultures in a single trip.
Rail-Trails
Not every great ride needs traffic to avoid. Our rail-trail routes take advantage of car-free corridors built on old rail lines — flat-to-rolling, scenic, and about as relaxed as multi-day cycling gets.
The GAP & C&O Canal Trail is the classic version of this: nearly 335 miles of connected trail from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C., entirely off-road. Missouri’s Katy Trail is another favorite — the longest developed rail-trail in the country, tracing the Missouri River for over 240 miles through wine country and small river towns. And several of our road and gravel trips, like Door County, work in a half day or more of rail-trail riding just to mix things up.
Gravel
Gravel riding has become one of our fastest-growing categories, and it’s easy to see why — it opens up terrain that pavement just can’t reach.
Southern Arizona-Patagonia Gravel Ride is a standout: 200 miles of grassland gravel and canyon backroads through Arizona’s Sky Islands, past one of the best birding destinations in the country and the state’s oldest commercial winery. This is also where our new e-gravel bike rentals really shine — if the climbs or the mileage look intimidating, an e-gravel bike puts this route within reach.
National Parks
Some of the most jaw-dropping scenery in the world sits inside national park boundaries, and several of our trips are built specifically to ride through them.
Two of our road rides, South Dakota Black Hills & Badlands and Glacier to Banff, are built specifically around park terrain — the Badlands and Black Hills on one trip, Glacier and Banff National Parks on the other. And the Desert Trifecta and Southern Arizona rides both thread through park and conservation land as a matter of course.
Unique Hikes
Not everyone wants to be on two wheels, and we don’t think you should have to be. Our hiking trips are built with the same fully supported, community-driven model as our rides.
The Trans-Catalina Hike takes you across the island’s mountains, beaches, and the full length of the Trans-Catalina Trail. The Glacier & Waterton Hike covers Logan Pass and Many Glacier Valley on foot. And for something further afield, the Bhutan Ride & Hike combines mountain biking and hiking in the world’s only carbon-negative country.
Go Farther, at Your Own Pace
The common thread across all of it — road, rail-trail, gravel, park, or trail — is that every trip is fully supported, every dollar raised goes to climate and environmental causes, and every route is designed so you experience a place slowly enough to actually see it. With e-road and e-gravel bikes now available to rent on select trips, more of these routes are open to more riders than ever. If a climb or a mileage number has ever talked you out of a trip, it might be worth a second look.
Find the ride, gravel route, or hike that’s calling your name at climateride.org/events.