Meet Our Ambassadors

Steve Fassbinder

Steve gathering water at camp during his bikepacking trip

His Friends Call Him Doom.

Steve, AKA “Doom” is Co-Author of The Bikeraft Guide, and Co-Owner of Four Corners Guides. Both with Lizzy Scully, his wife and fellow member of our Rack Pack. He started adventuring at age 14. He raced single-speed mountain bikes until his 30s when he started focusing on exploring huge backcountry landscapes. Passionate about creative, human-powered, low-impact travel, he’s bikepacked thousands of miles throughout the Southwest, Alaska, across the Karakoram, and through Kyrgyzstan, Iceland, and more. Doom has won three Bikepacking.com Awards: “The Ballsiest Trip” (2015), “Explorer of the Year” Award (2017), and “Best Trip Photography” (2019).

Kurt Refsnider

Kurt and his fat bike, bikepacking in the Alaskan snow

Route Director at Bikepacking Roots

Kurt rode his first century at age 13, and since then, has raced and placed in many endurance and ultra-endurance races. Beyond racing, Kurt is an avid bikepacker, having ridden extensively in the American West, traversed half the Alps, and through Scotland, Nepal, Morocco, and Alaska. He was also featured in the adventure cycling film Reveal the Path. Kurt is the Route Director of Bikepacking Roots, a non-profit organization he co-founded in 2017 to support the bikepacking community, and he currently coaches others in ultra-endurance bike racing. Off the bike, Kurt holds a Ph.D. in geological sciences and was a professor of geology at Prescott College for 6 years.

Check out his latest article on The Radavist.

Federico Cabrera

Federico preparing for his bikepacking journey

Better known as Their Only Portrait.

Federico Cabrera aka Fede is an OMM Ambassador based in Buenos Aires. “Their Only Portrait”, is a project where Fede cycles through beautiful but impoverished remote areas, in order to make, print, and give away portraits to families who won’t otherwise ever have a family photograph. While on these rides Fede carries all of his camera gear and even a photo printer with him! He also carries water filters & solar lights that he donates to those who need them most!

Read More Here

Steph Ortega

Steph Ortega Lowelife Crew

The Skilled Sawyer

Stephanie Ortega is a Guatemalan Mexican cyclist from Los Angeles, dedicated to reshaping the cycling landscape and creating space for women and people of color. Her mission is to challenge conventions and make her mark across various cycling disciplines—from skateboarding and bike couriering to mountain biking and trail work.

An avid lover of the outdoors, Stephanie finds solace and excitement in bike touring, mountain biking, and trail work—activities that immerse her in nature’s wonders and lead her to uncharted territories. As a skilled sawyer with Lowelifes Trail Crew, she contributes her expertise to maintaining and improving trails, combining her passion for cycling with environmental stewardship. Beyond her cycling endeavors, Stephanie is a talented artist and storyteller, capturing her experiences and the beauty of the world through her photography.

Her journey into bikepacking began with a humble setup: a fixie bike, a Jansport backpack, and a 100-mile adventure. This initial foray sparked a deep love for bikepacking, leading to her most ambitious trip yet—17 days in Alaska, where she tackled 1000 miles of unfamiliar terrain. Over the years, she’s explored the open road on various bikes, including track bikes, vintage mountain bikes, single speeds, and gravel bikes, but her current favorite is a hardtail mountain bike that embodies her spirit of exploration and resilience. It was a no brainer adding Steph to our Ambassador team.

Erik Hillard

Trail builder Erik using a chainsaw on a tree to create space

Trail Builder Extraordinaire

Erik Hillard’s first mountain bike ride was during a Santa Cruz rainstorm. Today, he still loves a bad weather ride. Erik volunteers with a trail restoration group in the Angeles NF, Lowelifes Respectable Citizens Club. A USFS B Sawyer, he BOB trailers chainsaw gear on remote single track and now he’ll be using an Old Man Mountain rack to haul gear and chainsaws into the backcountry. Erik also devotes time to clear the Pony Express trail below Lake Tahoe & is constantly searching for killer vegetarian Mexican food.

The Knoths

The Knoth family on a bikepacking trip near Mt Hood Oregon

The Power Family

Meet the Knoths. Dawn Rae, Rob, and Max have been bikepacking since before Max was in Kindergarten. They usually spend an entire month of each year bikepacking and sleeping on the ground! Sometimes those nights come in the form of longer trips in places like Baja, other times they are quick weekend overnights like this ride.

The three of them are a tour de force of bikepacking, familial, and general wisdom. You can watch them swap stories, forage for mushrooms, hug some very old trees, and check out the alpenglow and stars. All while being next to Mt. Hood, Oregon.

Click here to check out their video on the Loam and Gravel Society Youtube channel.

Trent Siggard

Trent Siggard

The Humble Filmmaker

Trent Siggard is a cycling youtuber, route maker, bikepacker, and vintage-bike restorer. After getting bit by the cycling bug in 2020, he rode his first bike 1,000 miles in 6 months before buying his first gravel bike. Since then Trent has gone on multi-day bikepacking trips, designed original routes, and directed films about other cyclists who inspire him.Trent has a history of heart disease and had a catheter ablation when he was 15 for a rapid heart rate of 285 BPM. It took 11 years for Trent to get serious about his cardiovascular health, and the catalyst for that was riding a bicycle. Over the next year Trent has goals to produce cycling films that use the bike as the through-line to tell stories about interesting places, people, and history. After a failed attempt at a timed 200 mile bike ride along the Pony Express in October 2023, he’s determined to complete a 200 mile(24 hour) cycling effort and enter into multi-day bikepacking races.

Lee Craigie

Lee Craigie riding on a MTB trail

One Of Scotland’s Greats

One of greats and the 2013 British MTB Champion, Lee is well known in the bike industry and we’re thrilled to have her on the team! Recently she got a dog, Coire, who she hopes to train as a search and rescue dog for the mountain rescue service in the highlands of Scotland. She is a well decorated athlete and some of her most recent achievements are- in 2016 and filled with passion about fair representation in the outdoors, Lee established The Adventure Syndicate in an effort to offer an alternative female sporting role model. In 2019 she became the Active Native Commissioner for Scotland and works closely with Transport Scotland and active travel delivery partners to ensure the public provision of fair, accessible spaces where everyone in Scotland can benefit emotionally and physically from being active everyday. Most recently, she published a book, Other Ways to Win, and won the Scottish award for Excellence in Mtn Culture.

Avery Rosenthal

Avery Rosenthal

The Lens Expert

Avery is a commercial brand photographer specializing in adventure and lifestyle photography. Her drive and passion lies in the joy of telling a story, documenting her experiences, and showcasing how it felt to be there. Avery discovered bikepacking a year after owning her first mountain bike and she was immediately obsessed. Her bikepacking love began as a 50 mile overnighter in Utah, and shortly after that she completed the Oregon Timber Trail. From route planning, to snack shopping, to beer juggling; Avery loves everything about packing her bags and getting out there which made her a natural choice to be one of our ambassadors.

Can we be so lucky that we get to be in the cycling business with some phenomenal people? Our Ambassadors embody adventure, inspiration, determination and passion for riding bikes. We’re a small company, and we want to support those inspirational riders, adventures and activists in the following core focus areas:

  1. Trail building and stewardship. Our passion is mountain biking and we know that planning, construction and maintenance of backcountry mountain biking is important for the growth of ridership.
  2. Kids on bikes. We’re stoked to share our passion for bikes with kids. We support people and organizations that help get kids, that may not have the opportunity to ride, pedaling bikes.
  3. Adventures by bike. Pushing the limits, whether its riding across a state, country or the world, traveling by bicycle is core to our brand and product.