Blackberry Mountain just announced a new partnership with Trek Travel, one of the world’s leading operators of active guided trips, with a focus on cycling and multi-sport. I’ve written about Trek Travel here at Forbes before, because in addition to the standard weeklong bike trips in places like Tuscany, they offer some really unique opportunities including hardcore immersion training camps and all-women trips. The award-winning company made the 2016 Travel + Leisure Magazine World’s Best Tour Operator list, and it stands out to me because it is run by a woman, Tania Burke, and outdoes the other top tier cycling companies in terms of its very high-quality hardware, thanks to a strong relationship with one-time parent Trek Bicycles (they are now separate companies, though both are based in Madison, WI).
The standard issue bikes are considerably better than industry norms: for road riding it’s the new generation full carbon 2019 Domane SL 7 Disc, featuring Shimano Di2 electronic shifting and disc brakes, and for mountain, the excellent dual suspension Fuel EX 8 27.5 inch model. Every guest also gets another first-rate hardware perk, a Garmin Edge 1030 GPS bike computer (I use an earlier version at home) preloaded with each day’s route, so there is no looking at maps and no getting lost. For safety, all bikes have front and rear blinking lights.
