There are few other bikes that pair with a particular ride as well as Salsa’s Cutthroat pairs with Adventure Cycling’s Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. Why? Because Salsa designed the bikepacking rig — which will see its third gen model launch in March 2026 — specifically with the GDMBR in mind. Now, one lucky cyclist will win a new Cutthroat when they sign up for our 50th Anniversary GDMBR Drop-in Ride. Here’s a little history of the bike, the route, and how the two shaped each other from Joe Meiser, Salsa Cycle’s senior product manager, and Meaghan Hackinen, writer, endurance racer, and Tour Divide winner.
Joe Meiser
Salsa Cycles Senior product manager
Photo: courtesy of Joe Meiser
I became aware of the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and the fastest-known-time racing that was taking place on the GDMBR in the mid-2000’s via blogs from the likes of Mike Curiak and Pete Bassinger. At the time, there was very little published about racing the route other than those blogs and John Stamstad’s FKT. After having a little bit of success racing gravel events in the Midwest, I decided to line up for a run down ‘The Divide,’ starting in Banff in 2009. However, first I’d need a bike.
I was working as a designer for QBP and Salsa Cycles at the time, and we were beginning to dive headfirst into bikepacking and adventure cycling. We’d been racing gravel events, and we were beginning to play with ideas that would influence the modern-day gravel bike.
What was clear in our research of The Divide was that there was no adequate equipment for the route and racing at the time. The biggest opportunity seemed to be addressing the toll that riding a mountain bike took on riders’ hands and wrists. So in 2008, we launched a bike specifically for the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and bikepacking: the drop bar Salsa Fargo.
After producing the Fargo in steel and titanium for nearly a decade, Salsa riders, sponsored athletes, and employees were asking for a lighter, more comfortable, and faster Fargo. Out of that ask came the Cutthroat.
In 2016, we launched the carbon Salsa Cutthroat at the beginning of the Tour Divide race in Banff, and I had the privilege of riding with several media partners and our engineer on the project from Sparwood, Alberta, to Whitefish, Montana. Looking back, it was a pretty ideal way to launch the bike. Here we are 10 years and three generations of the Cutthroat later, and we’re still just as passionate about adventure and about The Divide as when we started.
Meaghan Hackinen
Writer, endurance racer, and Tour Divide winner
Photo: Alexandera Houchin
From the moment I laid eyes on my Cutthroat, I knew I was signing on for adventure. Three years later, I was waving goodbye to a crowd of happy onlookers at the Tour Divide start line in Banff, heading out on the quest I’d been dreaming of since day one.
The Divide demands efficiency over thousands of miles of mixed terrain — from gravel roads to peanut butter mud and bone-jarring washboard — and the Cutthroat proved well suited to the challenge. Balanced for speed and control, it felt fast on open stretches and remained confidence-inspiring when the route dissolved into ruts and rocks.
When days blur together, having a setup that simply works is invaluable. Somewhere in the wide-open Great Basin of Wyoming, hours from the next water source and even farther from the next sign of human habitation, the bike’s efficiency made it easier to keep moving when motivation was harder to find. Time and time again, my Cutthroat disappeared beneath me in the best possible way, allowing me to focus on the experience itself: quiet stretches of gravel, hard-earned mountain passes, and the deep satisfaction of moving through vast landscapes under my own power.