The Winter GravelQuest — Dec 8th 2025 – Jan 25th 2026!

Welcome to the all-new Winter GravelQuest, featuring 8 weeks of gravel adventures!

Each week we’ll post two new segments, ride at your leisure, and collect our unique Vancouver Island wildlife icons over the season!

Sign-up form is now active, scroll down to the next section!

How It Works

In a nutshell, two segments are featured every week for eight weeks, and riders can go ride them as fast or slow as they want. The main goal is to (hopefully!) check out some new gravel paths, trails and routes. For each segment you complete, you’ll be awarded a nifty wildlife icon on the scoreboard – try to collect 3-of-a-kind, or all 10 for bonus points!

Occasionally select segments will also be timed – give them a go for some bonus points. Your results and scores are collected here, and will be tracked and updated each week, along with a weekly write-up. You do need a Strava account, but doesn’t matter if it’s free or paid, all are welcome. And jump in any time – join the fun part way through!

If you’ve done our Segment Challenge, or GRAVEL EDITION, this is very similar but with a few fun twists!

Also check out the FAQ, scroll to the bottom of the page to check it out!

Safety is a huge priority of course, and all efforts are made to select quiet paths and trails that are low traffic, but please do not take any unnecessary risks, this is just for fun!

Defending Vancouver Island Wildlife

The Island is a unique place, and the wildlife communities we find here are our original residents, and are in need of our protection! From cutting down forests, to housing encroaching on wilderness areas to climate change, things are pretty rough for them.

This event I’d like to highlight The Fur-Bearers, one of Canada’s oldest wildlife protection charities, that advocates for wildlife on the Island and across all of Canada.

As well each week our email update will include a short section from them, highlighting some neat info on fur-bearers, wildlife and peaceful co-existence.

Six of the species featured in our Wildlife Icons are considered fur-bearers, and make up our Categories for the event. The Fur-Bearers works to protect fur-bearing animals through conservation, advocacy, research and education. Part of the ‘chip-ins’ will go towards them, and consider becoming a member to support their work as well!

GravelQuest Wildlife Icon Credit

A huge thank-you to Segment Challenge speedster and artist (who’s also contributed some of the coolest prizes we’ve had with offers to draw portraits) Louis Fernet-Leclair who generously created the icons for the series – thank you Louis!!

Winter GravelQuest – Rules & Sign-Up

A few rules to try to keep things fun for all:

• Be sure to join the AboutTheRide Strava group if you haven’t already (see button below)
• There’s a full week to complete segments, ride any time you wish, as many times as you wish, if it’s a TIMED segment your fastest result on Strava will be the one that counts.
• Most segments will be NON-TIMED SEGMENTS, and will not feature a time, and all will receive the same number of points (1pt). There will be a few TIMED SEGMENTS – these will be ‘competitive’ and the times tracked, and a few bonus points awarded for the top times (5pts, 4pts, etc..)
• Make sure your ride(s) is ‘public’ on Strava so I can see it in the segment list.
• The hard cut-off is 6pm Sunday each week when I pull the results from the segments, if you upload after that, tough luck!
• The TIMED SEGMENTS are to be SOLO efforts! You are not allowed help! Cannot draft another rider during any portion of a segment. Any riders found to be cheating will be removed from the competition. (It’s fine being side-by-side with a friend however, since there is no drafting benefit.)
• The rest of the NON-TIMED SEGMENTS can be ridden any old way you want, best with friends!
• Bikes: since we’re on trails, anything goes! All-road bikes may work for some segments, but you’re better off on a gravel or cyclocross bike, but MTBs (hardtails or full-suspension) are welcome as well!
• For each segment completed, you’ll be awarded one of our 10 Wildlife Icons at random. (So usually two per week.) Each is worth 1pt. If you collect 3-of-a-kind, you’ll get a bonus 3pts, and if you collect one of each, 5pts will be awarded as well.
• Do not edit your Strava ride files. Do not crop your ride files to the segments. There must be a ‘substantial’ amount of time and distance before and after each segment, so it’s part of a ‘ride’, and not an edited/cropped file of only the segment. This is supposed to be a fun cycling challenge, not a hack-a-thon.
• Safety safety safety – please follow the rules of the road!

There are six different categories, and they don’t correlate to anything! 😂

And yes, it’s totally free!

The segments will be a rich variety of trails – there will be climbs, and some flatter or faster trails. Some will be short, and some may end up rather long efforts! Most will be within 20-60mins riding distance from the Switch Bridge. The segments themselves will normally be nearby each other as well, so reasonable to do in one ride (but not always!)

That’s it, welcome to the series! Note the sign-up form is a GoogleDocs form.

Sorry, but failure to follow these two steps will likely result in omission from weekly results.

Results!

Below you’ll soon find our results! Note the tabs at the bottom to flip between overall and individual weeks. Please contact me if there are any errors. COMING SOON: If a PDF is preferred, simply click here! Here is the full link to the GoogleDoc. (You can view the Notes each week for the Bonus and Curse details, which doesn’t show up in the table below.)

The GravelQuest is a new version of our Segment Challenge GRAVEL EDITION, and will likely replace it moving forward.

The Segment Challenge started on the road, but we also had a gravel edition in the fall for three years as well!