Missoula’s bikepacking community resource for trans, non-binary, gender-expansive, and women riders.
We host free workshops, bikepacking overnights, and community-building events throughout the year!
We share a desire to escape and deconstruct the sexism and misogyny prevalent in the bikepacking world, and to create something more inclusive, positive, fun, and beautiful in its place.
All trans folks are welcome in Slow Spokes spaces, including trans men, trans women, and all other embodiments of trans identity.
Everyone’s experience in the outdoors is different. Many of us — especially trans folks in Montana — face unique forms of marginalization. We prioritize this fact when creating liberating, joy-filled spaces where we can heal, grow, and let the constraints of the world melt away as we pedal together and celebrate our community in bikepacking bliss.
To facilitate mission-driven spaces, our events are not for cis-men.
Our spaces do not welcome anyone who perpetuates homophobic, transphobic, sexist, ableist, racist, or any other identity-based microaggressions or aggressions.
Everything is a work in progress. We aim to be a vessel for change and joy in our community — our participants are the ones steering the bike.
Film below lovingly created by Media Committee member, Gretchen Powers.
Our Values
Safety: Participants’ physical and emotional safety comes first.
Accessibility: We acknowledge the unequal social and individual barriers faced by our riders and actively work to deconstruct them.
Financial: Cost should never be a barrier — all our events are free (or in rare cases exceptionally low-cost).
Social: Our participant-centered model centers inclusivity and a welcoming environment for all, regardless of background or experience.
Systemic: We acknowledge the many systems of oppression facing our participants such as racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. and use our collective experience under systems of oppression to uplift each other and overcome the barriers that have kept us away or apart in the past.
Authenticity: We encourage folks to be themselves in all Slow Spokes spaces, and task ourselves as organizers with meeting all participants where they are — we start there and learn and grow together.
Sharing: We are stronger together. Sharing resources, knowledge and gear, and community with one another uplifts all.
Collaboration: We believe everyone can be a mentor at some point in their journey. Each participant can be a guide, teacher, and collaborator for another. We grow by learning from each other by:
Collective ownership
Community-building
Collaborative work and leadership
Consent: We don’t make assumptions. We ask before offering help, advice, or any kind of physical contact with a person’s being or belongings.
Overturning the Status Quo: Normal is boring; normal oppresses us and our friends; normal is not working. We want absurd ideas; we want something new, beautiful, and wonderful.
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