Christina Grande’s first memories of biking stem from her childhood in San Francisco, where her uncle worked as a bike messenger. She recalls riding amongst traffic on Haight Street to get pizza with him, scaring her mom. Though she briefly lost her connection to bikes in high school, she grew excited by the sport again in college, when she used a bike to commute to class. Since then, she has become an avid rider, founded a mountain bike guiding business, and worked to promote cycling for women and girls in Alaska.
Grande moved to Alaska in 2007 and began working at the Bicycle Shop a few years later — a job that would influence her involvement in bike advocacy in the state. Over ten years of employment in bike shops, she started to notice how much infrastructure benefited ridership: When new trails were built, the shop sold more bikes. This motivated Grande to join the board of Singletrack Advocates and volunteer her time to trail building. She also became involved with Anchorage GRIT, an organization that introduces middle school girls to mountain biking.
Founded by Lael Wilcox and Cait Rodriguez, Anchorage GRIT is an after school program that culminates in a bike-packing trip every spring. “We ride with them for a couple of hours after school,” says Grande. “We have a lesson plan for each time we meet, like bike safety, bike maintenance, or 101 mountain bike skills.” At the end of the program, participants ride to Serenity Falls Hut over two and a half days. “That’s a big, big ride for them,” Grande says. “At the end of the program, they get to keep their bikes. It’s almost like they earned their bike,” she continues.
Grande says that Anchorage GRIT riders tend to start the program nervous and shaky, but they gain confidence and skills over the course of the program. “They’re kind of growing up before our eyes,” she says, “So, it’s more than teaching them how to do a bike trip. It’s really showing them that they are doing a lot of things they probably thought they weren’t able to.”
In late 2019, Grande and her husband, Dusty Eroh, decided to start a mountain bike guiding business called Alaska Bike Adventures. “People were pretty pumped about being outside, which is really fun,” she says. Grande also coached and taught skills clinics through the business, and enjoyed the reward of breaking down movements and skills with motivated riders. Eventually the pair added winter fat biking trips to their offerings, guiding guests to the Knik glacier or on overnight trips in the White Mountains.
Though the pair closed up shop for Alaska Bike Adventures in late 2024, Grande remains passionate about getting people, especially women, trans, and non-binary people, out on bikes. “People ride bikes for a lot of different reasons,” she says. “It’s important to just include people — at the end of the day, I felt super included, and that’s how I began riding.” Grande looks back on riding with her uncle fondly, but knows not everyone has such supportive early experiences on bikes. In order to help increase diverse representation in the sport, she also works with a group called Radical Adventure Riders, a national group focused on supporting trans and non-binary riders.
And in her personal time, Grande continues to log miles on her own bicycle — she recently completed the Trans Am bike race, riding 4,300 miles across the Lower 48 in 25 days. “It was my first time doing a super long ride like this, and I learned a lot,” she says. “It’s great to be back in Alaska though, I missed the cool summer,” she adds, “It was boiling down south.”
Emily Sullivan is a photographer and writer focused on outdoor recreation, environmental wellness, and community empowerment. She is based on Dena’ina lands, where she can usually be found skiing, packrafting, or berry picking.
