Dan
Milner
Adventure / Photographer
I first threw my leg over a mountain bike the same year as Yeti were born, 1985. Thirty nine years later I'm still finding the same stoke, albeit with fatter tires and a big old dose of suspension.
Since that first game-changing day, I've been using the mountain bike as a tool (and an excuse) to travel, endlessly searching out remote singletrack in some of the world's wildest, and often unridden places -from Afghanistan to North Korea- to come back with a story or two to share.
Those stories have been read by countless readers of some of the world's most iconic media, and I hope, have been a catalyst for people to go find their own bike adventures. After all, wherever you do it, or how you do it, riding is never "just" riding.
Yeti bike of choice - why?
The SB135 is the Swiss army knives of bikes. Playful, chuckable, but forgiving, this bike is way more than the sum of its parts, and charges way harder than its 'short travel' name implies.
What is your first memory on a bike?
Leaving the training wheels behind when my dad pushed me down our street while telling me he still had hold on the saddle, as I pedalled away, before finally at the end him telling me that all along I'd been rolling on my own, and that finally I'd learnt to balance.
Best feeling on a bike?
Rolling along a trail you never rode before and just nailing every rock garden and feature without a dab, first go, non stop.
What is your biggest source of inspiration outside of mountain biking? Why?
Big mountains. They're so humbling and powerful, yet at the same time they provide a constant urge to get outside and be among them.
A word of advice to the groms?
There are no disciplines in mountain biking except your own. Ride like you want.
Speed or Style?
Style.
Top 3 riding destinations?
Upper Mustang, Nepal, especially the descent from Muktinath to Lupra.
Kyrgyzstan, riding ancient horse trails that form endless singletrack.
Torridon, Scotland. Rocky, wild, untamed weather. If you can ride here you can ride anywhere.
Accolades:
- Organised and photographed numerous pioneering and/or unique mountain bike expeditions and trips to locations such as Iraqi Kurdistan, North Korea, Afghanistan's Wakhan corridor, Rwanda, Lebanon, Ethiopia and the most southern trail on Earth.
- Subject of Yeti's movie "PhotoVagabond".
- Subject of Shimano movie "In Search of Golden'
