Never in the Way - Anthill Films

About 100 years ago in December of 2019 I had the unique opportunity of working with Anthill Films on a project they were doing for the Trek Checkpoint.

The brief was to come up with a route through a place I’d never been and the crew at Anthill would document the adventure. Seeing as December in Chicago is the beginning of the grind through the seemingly endless Midwestern winter, the Arizona desert was the obvious choice.

I settled on a route that would start in Flagstaff on Route 66 and end in Phoenix where I could visit my sister and see my nephew. I found a couple routes on Bikepacking.com, the Coconino Loop and the Black Canyon Trail, that I could easily connect via some pretty epic gravel roads. Since I couldn’t find a specific route that connected the two cities, I was really pumped to be able Tetris a couple existing routes into one along with some mystery connections.

The video was released by Trek back in December, and I just randomly found it when I got curious if it was ever going to see the light of day. Between all the craziness of the last year and since I’ve been riding solely for Squid, I kind of thought it might have been lost to the ether. Regardless, I’m really excited to see the finished product and share it with you! Anthill Films are the best in the business and also a bunch of really rad people. Hope you dig!