Nicolas Teichrob, Darcy Turenne and Mike Hopkins ventured into the Andes of Bolivia...this is what came of their adventure. Inside you'll find some of Nic's finer snaps from the trip and an article on their experience, the photos are amazing!
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Photos and words by Nic Teichrob
Courtesy of Bike Magazine
Two years ago while traveling through South America, I stumbled across the quaint town of Sorata, Bolivia. Located approximately a 4-hour drive north of the capital city, La Paz, Sorata sits at 2,678 meters above sea level, and is surrounded by the glaciated mountain peaks of the Cordillera Real. The grandness of the mountainous terrain and deep valleys here yield some of the most incredible and diverse mountain-biking terrain anywhere in the world.
In May 2011, Darcy Turenne and Mike Hopkins and I joined forces to explore, capture and share the fabulous culture, beauty and bountiful trails that surround Sorata. With ex-pat and local trail builder Travis Gray of Andean Epics as our guide, we were eagerly anticipating the thin air under our tires and being high in mountains of the southern hemisphere.
The trails near Sorata were built with the modern freerider in mind. They are almost all accessible via shuttle, aside from some big mountain objectives that are easily reached with a couple-hour hike-a-bike. The singletrack snakes along alpine ridges, often sporting significant exposure with real consequences, cruises through open meadows and winds through villages providing sights along the way that are unlike any normal biking adventure. For the big-mountain rider, there are endless possibilities of riding open scree slopes for thousands of vertical feet. In fact, the average trail here has about 6,000 to 9,000 vertical feet of continuous descending, which in my books makes for a one-of-a-kind riding experience. All of the singletrack here is the result of Gray, and the hard work he has put into building a large trail network that will keep all riders of any skill level grinning from ear to ear.
These images are just some of the highlights from our trip to Bolivia.
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