Ascend Armenia

Ascend Armenia

A bikepacking race that invites you to discover and explore a place that few cyclists venture

New Dates! August 30th through Sept 8th, 2024

We’re back for 2024!

After a successful and very challenging running of the first Ascend Armenia race in 2023, we’re happy to announce that we will be back for 2024! We’ve also just been named one of bikepacking.com’s best new events! We’ve enjoyed incorporating feedback from our 2023 racers, and we’ve worked to make the 2024 course still challenging, but more completable and more rideable, with less hike a bike. Unchanged will be Armenia’s natural beauty and incredible hospitality. We’ve also moved the race date by a couple of weeks into July in order to seek slightly dryer weather and better ground conditions for racers to ride. Registration is open now!

Our 2023 race captured some peak spring beauty, and also challenged racers with all of the variety that Spring in Armenia could muster! Adrien Liechti was our first ever winner with a time of 5 days, 11 hours, and 45 minutes. Our second finisher was Kai-Uwe Lehung, and our final podium finisher was Jacob Hora.

Ascend Armenia is organized and run as an effort to build awareness and support of the sport of cycling in Armenia. Our goal is to feature this beautiful country, her warm and hospitable people, her culture, and the beautiful, challenging terrain. We want to encourage discovering Armenia by bicycle, because traveling by bike allows us to move at a slower speed, one that invites human encounters, cross cultural exchanges, and appreciation for the natural environment.

Ascend Armenia, in addition to the ultra distance race, also organizes local cycling events and competitions that build local cycling community and help us to represent Armenia more authentically.

Race registrations alone do not fully cover the expenses involved with putting on our events, and if you similarly passionate about Armenia, cycling, and discovery by bike, we invite your participation in this event through financial support.

Donate to Ascend Armenia

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Ride Report: Armenia from the eyes a first time Bikepacker

In 2022 Sarkis Benliyan took a journey to bikepack Armenia, a country with which he shares heritage. This was his first bikepacking trip, a voyage of discovery, and a leap into the unknown.

Read More

Rodeo Labs sat down with our race organizing team to have an introduction conversation and podcast about the history of this race and what we’re working to accomplish with it. Check it out!

Rodeo Labs / Ascend Armenia podcasat

The race map, presented by Ride With GPS

Route may be refined prior to race day as we are continuously scouting and reviewing it. GPX can be downloaded HERE.

After our visit in 2021 we created this short film, The Places We Went, as a way to share our experience and inspire others to ride through this beautiful place.

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Event Supporters

Rodeo Adventure Labs

Rodeo Adventure Labs is a bicycle manufacturer and community based out of Colorado, USA. The mission of the company is Ride, Explore, Create, and the Ascend Armenia event is perfect expression of those values. Rodeo is supporting the race through route development, race management support, PR, and financial resources. The goal of Rodeo’s involvement in Ascend Armenia is to encourage more riders to test and expand their limits as individuals while riding in incredible places.

Ride With GPS

Ride With GPS is the premiere route planning and navigation app for cyclists worldwide. Ascend Armenia has been using Ride With GPS since its beginning as a way to scout, map, and develop the course and understand the country, sometimes from across the world. Partnering with Ride With GPS will allow racers access to the best maps as they plan their race, and it will also allow race organizers to share the best and most accurate waypoint info for food, lodging, and course notes along the way.

Each racer will be given a full subscription to Ride With GPS so that they are able to make the most use of the platform before, during, and after the race.

Ascend Armenia Instagram

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Dawn in the Armenian highlands. It may seem quiet, but our crew has been hard at work this year. The course has been remodeled and refined for more rideability and a higher completion rate, but without sacrificing the beautiful soul of this place, or the sublime views along the way. August is coming fast! Mount Ararat, a constant, ancient, companion in the early days of the race course. August 30, 2024 The switchbacks up to Dsegh are a degraded road from Soviet times. For cars, not as fun, but for bikes, absolutely perfect. You’ll have them almost completely to yourself. Yes. 5137m, 16,854ft Mt. Ararat keeping watch over @lorenz.baccifava on day one. High above Ijevan the highlands has a palette of three colors: green, white, brown, and when we spotted @thomas_quirk75, a speck of red. On the last day of the 1200km ultra race, we also put on an Ascend (Descend?) Armenia downhill race on the last descent of the ultra course. The rutted, exposed, technical descent was thrilling to navigate at high speed, and unsurprisingly the DH racers did it at least twice as fast as the ultra racers 😂. @gor_giginyan took the win in the race, and it’s really no surprise that he did because ever since we met him riding last year’s XC race on his DH bike, he’s been wowing us on his insta with his killer skills and style. We think it’s important to hold local events in Armenia alongside the ultra race so that we can be a part of the local community and champion all cycling in Armenia. Keep an eye out for other non-ultra events in the future. We have ideas! Ivan Nezhdanov is the 8th and final finisher of Ascend Armenia 2023. He completed the course in 8 days, 11 hours, and 57 minutes. To us the last rider is a special achievement, because this rider spent more time in the rain, the sun, the warm, the cold, the tired, the sore. This rider has to push, and when others have finished, keep pushing.

Ascend Armenia

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