ALPINE ORIGINS

FireFlies isn’t a race. Started 20 years ago in the European Alps, with the backing of Sir Ridley Scott, it’s an annual solidarity ride to raise money for British leukaemia charity Bloodwise, with riders pedalling under the slogan ‘For those who suffer we ride’. In conversations over cols, various offspring fled the European nest. FireFlies West rides down the Californian coast and FireFlies Antipodes traverses New Zealand. In 2015, the European FireFlies graduates Polo Luisetti and Axel Brinck, of Chilean descent, headed home from the Alps to set up the series’ mad, off-road Patagonian cousin. The South American FireFlies is now in its fifth year.

Above: the FireFlies regroup after one of many river crossings of the Río Puelo; here: granite spires on the ArgentineanChilean border tower over a solitary rider