Pro photographer Jake Stangel and a small group of friends trade the summertime fog of San Francisco for the soaring peaks of Europe, touring across borders in search of perfect swimming holes and exotic cheese. This year’s ride was a special one, bringing five riders deep into the Italian Dolomites, across Slovenia’s stunning Soča Valley, and onward to Trieste. Let the stunning images inspire you…
The past three summers, two of my best friends and I escaped our foggy summer home in San Francisco and ventured over to Europe to credit card tour some of the beautiful mountain ranges in the region. This year, to commemorate the 40th birthdays of Christian Rose (the mustachioed one) and Ross Spruiell (the stretchy one), we opted for a route starting in the foothills of the Italian Dolomites above Venice, riding deep along the Northern Italian border, swinging into Slovenia and the Soča Valley, and finally heading towards the finish in Trieste.
This year, we brought along two more friends: Nick Ybarra out of Austin, TX, and fellow San Franciscan by way of Bristol, Ed Dorsey. For the five of us, these tours are basically the best way we know how to spend holiday time… a mix of nose-to-the- ground exploration of land and culture, butchering the Italian language at local refugios, trying a thousand new cheeses, trying to understand why Italian table bread and Italian table napkins have the same texture, basically living with our brains fully tuned in/turned on.
Having photographed cycling for nearly 15 years, starting with the Rapha Continentals back in 2010, I’m of the belief that we’re so saturated by cycling imagery on 2025 Instagram that the world doesn’t need many more shots of people just riding bikes. On this trip, I was mostly after all the little visual anecdotes and memory cues that surround the experience of riding bikes, and what that exploring affords you emotionally. And a lot of male gaze that comes with a really tight-knit group of guys who have known each other for a really long time. Ross texted a group shot of the five of us to his friend Emily, who wrote back, “no male loneliness here!” which kind of became the catch phrase of the trip.
The Golden Ratio
In 2022, we rode across the Pyrenees from Girona to San Sebastian. The elevations (coming from the Bay) were reasonable and familiar, closely following the ‘golden ratio’ we have out here in the Bay Area of ~1,000 feet of elevation per 10 miles. In 2023, we rode the Torino Nice Rally route. Highly recommended, very doable. A little harder. Stunning. In 2024, Christian became a dad and we took a year off. In 2025, on this route in the Dolomites, that elevation-to-distance ratio nearly doubled. Many of our days were like 40 miles and 7k-8k of climbing. Prior to the trip, I made the very wise decision to drop my front chainring from a 40T to a 36T; best thing I’ve ever done for my soul and my knees.
I was the only one to do so, and after remarking aloud on how glad I was to have made the swap, I kept quiet about this for the rest of the ride and kept this slice of joy to myself. The Dolomites are steep. You’re either riding in a valley or switchbacking up or down a mountain at an angle that’s so severe that you often lose sight of where you just came from right after the switchback. It was a sight to behold. We were constantly covered in sweat, and I went through a whole set of new brake pads in eight dry days of riding.
Good Beta
Another thing: these trips are a highlight of our year, and are a big time and financial investment for us. We want to do it right, not rely on the internet or internet speculation, really. After agonizing over our Pyrenees route back in 2022 with a thousand tabs open, we struck up a conversation with Peter Gaskill, the gentleman who runs all touring over at Service Course Girona, and we paid him a very reasonable fee to make us a route based on his personal knowledge of the region, including water stops before big passages, good restos, and some fun bits thrown in, such as this gem: “You are now in France and the gravel track going downhill will take you to a paved narrow road that descends to the valley. There are herds of horses and cows on both sides of the border. Some are friendly and will allow you to pet them, but don’t say I said so.”
This routing system was worth its weight in gold, it made us feel like we had a local with us, and gave us lots of peace of mind, especially in regards to the whereabouts of water and food. It allows you to look around lots more instead of constantly being buried in the pixelated map of your phone or bike computer. This year, we hired Alberto over at Dolomiti Gravel to do the same for us. It feels a little bougie to go this route, far from our more freewheeling bikepacking-camping days of our youth, but, at 40, we’re here for it, god damn it, and consider it money very well spent.
Deep in the Middle
The middle of the trip is often the part of the tour I love the most. My legs are acclimated to the ask of each day, but they’re not yet toast. Since these trips start and end in cities, it often means we’re in the deepest and most remote regions of the mountains – mostly in small towns with one church and two restaurants total. Life gets really simple. We have a history of discovering and enjoying impossibly gorgeous, nearly biblical-level swimming holes. There was a descent along a river that almost made me cry in the totality of its beauty.
I was stopping to take a thousand photos, then bam, the rest of the group found it and were patiently waiting for me to head in. Truly the ultimate swimming hole. Looking at the first photo makes me so happy. Two years ago, in the French Alps, after that swimming hole, we joyously rode into town, where the day-drunk French hotel manager told us he gave away our rooms and it became a total nightmare way to end the day; this year, a polite and earnest young Italian checked us in without fuss, gave us a pizza restaurant recco for dinner, we walked around town, dried our laundry on the patio, and ate to our hearts content after a perfect day.
The Soča Valley
Three-quarters of our way through we rode into Slovenia, a country that—to me—was passed over and slightly eclipsed by its more famous neighbors to the West. And goddamn, that was my bad. The Soča Valley in Slovenia is easily one of the most gorgeous places I’ve seen in the world, populated with a kind and gentle population. No egos, no attitude, just a population of folks who know where they live is beautiful and underrated and kindly welcome you in. For a day and a half, we rode along the Soča River, taking frequent swim breaks, and on the the of the second day, we rode up and out of the valley, then pushed our bikes up a steep mountain through a mile or two of tall, stinging wild grasses coated in prickly things and pollen, just to bring us back to earth a bit. But dinner had the best view of my life (not pictured, ironically).
The Ending is Bittersweet
To be honest, I always kinda struggle with the last day or two of the tour as you head towards a big city destination… the grandeur of the mountains gives way to something flatter, hotter, a little less sexy and magnificent. Things feel like they’re almost over. Though you’re riding closer to a higher density of Aperol Spritzes, you’re also emotionally saying bye to steep peaks and sheep and solitude. But it’s how it goes, and spent a lot of time on the last day centering and re-centering and dragging back to the center this notion that we are so fortunate to have the time and body and strong friendships to even participate in these journeys in the first place. With intention and effort, they’ll continue our whole lives long. The last photo was taken by the hotel clerk in Trieste, just after the five of us finished our tour.