Back in 2015 when the first Grinduro event was held at Quincy, California gravel riding was really in its infancy. Grinduro, where participants experience the perfect mix of timed sections, having a great time with their friends and painting the night purple at the famous after-party, is going to be celebrating its 10th anniversary in style by heading back to its birth place in 2025. Read on to find out more.
This photo captures perfectly the slightly bonkers atmosphere that Grinduro events generate. A group of purple-clad trailside pixies ring cowbells and wave sink plungers in the air, while participants grind their way past, on-route to some incredible, sun dappled, dusty forest singletrack. The first Grinduro set the bar super high and pioneered many of the facets of a gravel festival weekend that we all take for granted.
The weekend of 11th to the 14th of September 2025 will see hundreds of gravel lovers descending once one on the former gold rush town of Quincy. Located at just over 1000m of altitude and surrounded by vast areas of forest, Quincy makes the perfect venue for a Grinduro event. Behind the town sits the 2200m high Mount Hough and it’s here that riders will experience the real buzz of Grinduro on the huge network of trails created by the Sierra Buttes Trail Stewardship (SBTS) group. The SBTS were the organisers of Grinduro Quincy between the inaugural event in 2015 up until its relocation elsewhere in California in 2019, but for 2025 they’re back.
Grinduro events are described as the “perfect race-to-party ratio” and the organisers of next year’s event in Quincy are promising to bring back all the ingredients for a fantastic weekend “camping, live music, and good times with good people all around.” Next year’s event will also see “two days of excellent food, a handmade bike show, an art exhibition.”
Many of the details are the event are still to be confirmed, but the date is set-in-stone, so add it into your schedule and keep an eye on the Grinduro website for further information.
For anyone keen to get their fix of purply-goodness a little sooner, there are still two events left in this year's Grinduro calendar - Italy at the end of September and Japan in the middle of October.