Kickstands Up! Women Bikers GLOW In The Upper Valley

Sep 22, 2023 01:55PM ● By Charlotte Albright Photography By Herb Swanson

One soggy Thursday night in the summer of 2021, about 10 avid mountain bikers—all women—showed up at French’s Ledges Trail in Plainfield, New Hampshire, keen to scramble up and down hills and over slippery rocks and roots. No one knew exactly what to expect, but everyone seemed game for just about anything.

Juli Hamblin leads Janet Moore and Kim Cohen on one of GLOW’s Thursday night adventure rides

Ride leader Juli Hamblin, who recruits physicians for Dartmouth Health, had sent out an invitation through a couple of social media platforms. Her mission, then and now: to link up with other intermediate and advanced riders eager to spend at least one night a week, year-round, whatever the weather, navigating tricky terrain on the Upper Valley’s 15-plus trails. And—this was important from the start—Juli wanted to create a community of ambitious, can-do women willing to be uplifting and encouraging to one another as they took risks and rose to daunting new challenges.

Two years later, Glorious Ladies on Wheels—GLOW, for short—boasts a core group of 30 skilled riders. Their lively website and steady stream of social media feeds, labors of Juli’s love for the sport, have drawn over 400 steady followers. In addition to the Thursday night rides from a range of locations (followed by social “afterGLOWS” at members’ homes or local restaurants), GLOW holds clinics and weekend getaways within and beyond the Upper Valley, including bone-chilling winter ascents to remote mountain cabins. A biweekly podcast offers a wealth of information about technique, equipment, and tips for coping with the ups and downs of a daunting sport.

Ready to Roll

Juli, who grew up in Cornish, New Hampshire, started biking as a young girl, egged on by her brother and father. “But it was just always the boys, right? I did find a women’s Monday night ride back in the late nineties, with the wives of my dad’s biking buddies. So I got to feel the difference a women’s ride makes from a young age.”

Juli moved away to start her career, but when she returned to the Upper Valley to join Dartmouth Health, she bought a condo on Mount Ascutney and hit the trails right outside her door. (Recently, the Ascutney Trails Association opened a brand-new biking flow trail named Kickstands Up! in honor of GLOW’s motto.)

“I have two young daughters, four-and-a-half and six-and-a-half. I travel a lot for work and my recreational time’s pretty limited,” says Juli. “So I love a standing ride. I love that you can just show up—that you know it’s going to be there, week after week,” she says.

She also knows it’ll always be tough going, even for her, an accomplished athlete. “I learned to read a trail from other outdoor sports such as snowboarding glade runs—my first passion,” she says. Juli was a Vermont All-State Soccer Goalie and captain of soccer and softball teams during high school and played rugby in and after college. So when she got her first mountain bike in 2012—“an old full-suspension bike with dated components and geometry”—she was ready to roll.

Back then, most women’s biking groups in the region were on-ramps for beginners, and Juli wanted a steeper learning curve. “With GLOW, we offer a place to shred, well beyond the typical stereotype of female mountain bikers,” she says. “It takes years of work to be able to join one of our rides, given the advanced terrain we cover at a swift pace. We’ve even attracted a handful of professional riders.”

An Exhilarating Challenge

But Juli herself isn’t aiming for pro status. “As a leader, I’m incredibly laid back and don’t take my riding too seriously,” she says. What she does take seriously is camaraderie, and she credits two other advanced riders for giving her the advice she needed to start GLOW and keep it going strong. Janet Moore, who recently retired from a career in IT from Dartmouth, and Anna Schaal, a Dartmouth Health nurse practitioner who works with cancer patients, have become certified mountain biking coaches, adding yet another layer of training for women who seek it.

Unlike Juli, Janet had a relatively late entry into biking. “I was a trail runner, doing triathlons and road biking, but then I hurt my hip and just could not run,” she says. “My husband’s a mountain biker, so we went mountain biking. But my God, I’d get on the trails, and I’m like, you’ve got to be kidding me. Rocks and roots? What is this? But when I got into regular mountain biking, I fell in love with it. So many challenges. Can I get up that route? Can I go down that thing? Do I have the courage to do half of it?” All reasonable questions from someone who’s had both hips replaced. “The other thing is, it keeps you present,” says Janet. “You’re not thinking about anything else because you’ve got to look at the trail. You’ve got to pay attention.”

For Anna, keeping a razor-sharp focus on the trails filters out workplace stress. Seeing patients struggle through cancer can be emotionally draining, but careening through the wilderness brings a kind of exhilaration she gets nowhere else. “The way mountain biking emulates life is so satisfying,” she says. “You look ahead, you can get over that obstacle, you don’t give up. What was hard yesterday is not so hard today. Things change. Sometimes we fall and sometimes it hurts, but that’s okay. We get back up and we do it again and we eventually become successful.”

Sharing a Bigger Mission

Anna Schaal, Juli Hamblin, and Janet Moore

To be clear, success, in GLOW terms, is not just a solo act. It’s a collective goal. “It’s really impressive, what this group does, but egos are left aside,” says Juli. “It doesn’t matter who’s in front. We just really enjoy each other, and we all share a bigger mission. We’re always thinking, ‘How can we give back? What are some good ideas?’ Some of the group’s events raise money for local communities in need. GLOW has also begun collaborating with local and national businesses, including Brownsville’s Butcher and Pantry and the Wheelhouse Bike Shop in Claremont.”

While men are welcome to join, women always lead the rides. “Some dudes will say,
‘I’m not riding with GLOW. It’s too intimidating,’” says Janet. “Which is pretty funny, since that’s why some women started riding without men to begin with.”

In some mountain biking events, female racers are, like their male counterparts, highly competitive, and a few can be cutthroat. But that’s not what GLOW is about. “We’re creating the opposite of that,” says Juli. “When someone’s having a rough day, either on the trails or off the trails, we’re here to straighten each other’s crowns.”

She plans to be doing that for a very long time. “For me, success means being able to ride both my snowboard and my mountain bike with my grandkids when I am 80,” she says. “For me, it’s not just a sport, it’s a lifestyle, and a community like no other.”