An autumn bike adventure down the US portion of the Eastern Divide Trail
75 comments
·January 6, 2025chrisweekly
Hey this reminds me of my good friend Chris Smith, who recently completed the Tour Divide -- a solo, unsupported 2,700 mile bike race from southern Canada to Mexico. He did it in 48 days -- which would be impressive for anyone -- but the kicker is, he's legally blind. https://blindguybiking.org/
EDIT: adding link to his youtube videos: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLx86K7wVysS06YQqC6Q5jiRNw...
tasuki
I visited the website with one question: how? How does a blind person ride solo? Or is "legally blind" a different thing from "blind"?
UI_at_80x24
CGoaB is a fantastic resource. It contains great stories, resources, and life lessons. Highly recommend.
I've gone on small trips myself (weekend length) and have kept my trips under 100km. My eventual goal is to ride from the Great Lakes region (of N.America) to the Yucatán Peninsula of C. America.
I ride a recumbent. I camp in a hammock. Of course I use Linux. =)
jodrellblank
Just keying off your comment about recumbents[1] to drop my new favourite bike obsession since the Brompton[2], the tiny and unusually designed Kwiggle folding bike: https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/ which has an upright riding position.
There's a German man on YouTube who is bikepacking with the Kwiggle and a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HQf71fMuIU
and it's small enough to fold into his canoe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exL-FCqtEOQ
The manufacturer has climbed the Stelvio Pass (1900 meters climb in 12Km) on it: https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/faltrad-stilfser-joch
and he has done 186 miles in one day around the Dutch IJsselmeer on it: https://www.kwigglebike.com/en_US/faltrad-300km saying "After the first test drives we noticed two things: the upright riding position is a lot of fun and even after long trips we were not tired at all".
[1] my favourite recumbent to read about/watch is the ICE Sprint with the extra large rear wheel. Worst HN recumbent story is jacquesm and his leg-sucked-underneath incident leaving a serious broken (shattered) leg injury: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
dowager_dan99
The recumbent gave me pause, because now I can't tell if the rear view mirror is mounted on your helmet or bike, but I know you've likely got a decent beard!
shagie
Not OP. I've got a recumbent trike (tadpole configuration). It's a TerraTrike traveler - https://www.terratrike.com/folding/traveler/ and as the url implies, it's a folding one that fits in the trunk of my rather small car.
The mirrors get mounted on the handlebars. https://www.terratrike.com/product/mirror-mirrycle/ (example of them mounted on a similar frame - https://www.utahtrikes.com/RECENTTRIKE-TerraTrike_Rover_Blac... )
jakeydus
but do you have a beard?
jkaptur
> I ride a recumbent. I camp in a hammock. Of course I use Linux. =)
Beard? :)>
UI_at_80x24
I sure do.
I am definitely a graybeard too. =)
aziaziazi
Wonder what model do you ride ? Any ressources to learn about those bikes ?
UI_at_80x24
I ride a Longbikes Slipsteam.
A great resource for learning all about 'bents is: bentrideronline.com
johnp314
I love this CGonaB site. I used it several times myself including for my similarly titled "Go west (not so young) man" diary documenting my XCountry ride in 2007. I didn't own a cell phone then (did they even exist then?). I used paper maps and had a small laptop to make my diary entries. I generally did them sitting outside town libraries (they were usually closed in the evenings when I arrived in towns) and most internet sites then were non-password and publicly accessible. I haven't made any documented treks since 2012 but still send the website money. You can see my "Go west..." diary here: https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=3d2&doc_id=2579&v=LL
hackingonempty
Bikepacking: like backpacking but on a bike. You ride dirt roads and easy trails away from cars, carrying your food, water, warm clothes, camping gear, etc... in bags mounted on your frame.
The format is also used for races, you ride as quickly as possible and can only rely on commercial services available to all for resupply and lodging, no prearranged or private support.
seadan83
Apparently bike-touring was called bikepacking by the old timers in the 70s. Somewhere along the way it turned into touring. Then got misappropriated to mean road vs dirt. Bikepacking is any kind of bike riding where you've got your "backpack" on the bike. All bikepacking is touring. Backpacking is simply carrying everything you need in your backpack, eg: "backpacking across Europe". Bikepacking is similar, but for with a bike. When you're riding a bike and carrying everything you need for a multi-day, it's bikepacking, regardless of terrain. #pedantics
This last summer I left my front door in the PNW and road 800 miles on a mixture of terrains to the tour divide, road 300 miles of that, then road another 1500 miles of pavement to Iowa. I'd call that bikepacking, and by my previous assertion it's also touring too. Not all touring is bikepacking, but all bikepacking is also touring. That trip is a good counter example of why it gets silly to define bikepacking by the terrain type.
MezzoDelCammin
My personal take on touring vs bikepacking is that the bikepacking movement was always more parallel to touring, rather than a superset. The bikepackers I've met are usually a lot more focused on minimizing the amount of stuff they carry.
It can be simplified into a "saddle bag" vs "paniers", but IMO this is just a symptom. A form folows function. If You need to carry a full tent, sleeping bag and a change of clothes, touring paniers and heavy frame are probably the only way to go.
If You can cut down on comfort (or are optimizing for speed over long distance), suddenly You're left with a whole lot of options on how to carry whatever's left and You can use much lighter frame to do so.
seadan83
Touring is from French. Means to go around and about. "Tour" is short for "Tour a velo", which is to travel on a bike. It encompasses short & long trips.
Touring vs bikepacking being distinct I think is an anglicism, an americanization and a commercialization of the terms. The Americanization part I believe is "Bike Tour" being mistaken for in-contrast to "Car Tourist". "Bike tour" has nothing to do with "Car Tourism" or "Bike tourist". It is not short for 'tourist', which is where the americanization comes in. The etymology is French.
Take a look at my counter-example - was that a tour, or a bikepacking? It was 50% pavement. Meanwhile 300 miles was on one of the worlds most famous bikepacking route. These distinctions based on how minimalist of what you carry or where you go make no sense. Given that example, the most consistent answer is clearly "both". It was a bikepacking trip - I was carrying what I would have were I backpacking, while on a bike. Because all bikepacking is touring, it was therefore also a tour. Had I stayed in hotels/hostels and/or with & friends every night (not carrying everything I needed), then it would have been touring and not bikepacking.
We can look to the etymology of the words. 'tour' comes from French. You can do a "tour a pied" (on foot), "tour a velo" (by bike), or "tour a voiture" (by car). Because cycling is the national sport of France, "un tour" is understood to often be by bike, it's just shortened. Bike tour comes from that etymology, it is a superset. A bike tour might include a 'backpack' (bags), or it may not.
Language does evolve. The "current" anglicized understanding is silly though and contradictory. It's also way more commercial than I'd like.
Sorry.. I once spent a solid 7 hours thinking about the difference of touring vs bikepacking while on a bikepacking race. I had some time to really dig into it... I kinda dislike that 'bikepacking' is thought to be something apart from touring (and only in mountains, only on dirt, only with inline bags)- when instead bikepacking is just a subset of bike travel, bike touring.
seadan83
> bikepacking movement was always more parallel to touring, rather than a superset.
I might have mixed up the subset/superset terms. Bikepacking is a subset of touring. All bikepacking is also touring.
Lio
I suspect that cycle touring is the much older term than bike packing.
In the UK we still have the Cycle Touring Club[1] which was founded in 1878, so it goes way back.
I don't even think there was originally much difference in the type of bags used. Really old school riders here used to use big saddle bags like those made by Carradice before panniers came into fashion.
I think I'm good with either term. All these amazing adventure stories make me long for summer again.
1. Recently renamed by some genius to Cycling UK (not to be confused with British Cycling which covers racing), still not sure why they bothered.
seadan83
'Touring' is a superset, it just means to go around and about on a bike. It comes from French. It's very old. Touring encompasses many different trip types. All bikepacking is touring. Not all touring is bikepacking.
WA
You are only a modern bikepacker if you ditch your traditional bags for what us Germans call "Arschrakete" (butt rocket): https://heuer-radsport.de/wp-content/uploads/asgarosforum/8/...
/s
MezzoDelCammin
Thanks for the new vocabulary. Now I'm wondering if Ortlieb ever comes up with a new product line ;-)
dowager_dan99
>> You ride dirt roads and easy trails away from cars
Usually away from cars, but not typically easy. Sometimes it feels like pushing a shopping cart over a mountain.
prmoustache
Yes, the roads are usually where they are for good reasons and avoiding all of them means having to deal with higher gradients and slower speed.
femiagbabiaka
Doing the Great Divide trail is high up on my bucket list.
dowager_dan99
Split it up and start now; there's no reason to wait because you think you have to do it all in one go. You can always do that, but you can carve it up into meaningful week or less pieces and go for it. ex: Banff to the US border is a pretty easy 3 days.
mauvehaus
Having thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail, I can tell you that most thru-hikers are pretty awed by the people who have racked up serious miles section hiking a week at a time. Regardless of where home is for you, at some point the logistics get challenging. Most of Maine, for example, is miles and miles from a useful airport, and even bus service is pretty sparse. It wouldn't be hard to spend as much time getting to and from the trail as it would be to actually hike/ride it.
A couple years ago, my wife and I thru-hiked the Long Trail. We looked pretty hard at taking a bus to the start, but couldn't come up with an itinerary that took less than two days. Her parents ended up both driving us to the start and spotting our car at the finish. The finish is in the middle of goddamn nowhere; the start is near a fairly large city in western MA. It sure seemed like it should've been easier.
For our honeymoon, we did a couple hundred miles of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail. The nearest place to the start to return a rented vehicle of any sort was a neighborhood U-haul (as in, not a corporate location; think a gas station with a couple trucks). And then we still needed a 1 1/2 hour shuttle ride to Old Forge. We spotted our car to the end of the trip and threw our boat in the back of the truck to get to the start.
pjs_
Great website and great use of time on earth
insane_dreamer
Haven't had time to read the article yet, but very cool to find a place where there are a bunch of such journals. Good to know the good 'ol Internet that I used to know and love is still out there. Bookmarking that one. Not really into offroad or gravel but have been planning a longish (2 weeks) road cycling trip for a while; wife and I looking for the opportunity (can't really take the kids along; I mean we could, and people do, but they would not be happy). In the meantime long weekend rides, local century events, etc.
jpm_sd
When I retire I'm just going to do this all the time.
0_____0
Take the time and do it now as well. Having gotten into it, I wish I'd spent every gap in school and employment out in the world, on a bike. It's too precious an experience to leave for later.
jpm_sd
I ride, but I don't have time for serious bikepacking right now. Three kids, two dogs, full time job, etc.
hondo77
Understandable. I would suggest that when the kids are old enough, consider doing smaller tours (a weekend, a week, etc.) when you can and not waiting until retirement to do any touring. The latter was my plan. Until I got colon cancer. I still ride but I can't do more than a couple of days in a row before I get digestive problems that put a halt to touring. With hindsight, I wish I would have done some one- to two-week tours while I was still able to.
Fricken
For the 2024 tour divide race 21% of the entrants were in the 60-69 age bracket. This means I don't need to be in too big a hurry to get all my bucket list bike tours done.
dowager_dan99
The BC Epic was created for a similar style ride but much shorter. 1000km makes it great for racers (2-3 days) to casual (week-plus). Simpler logistics, better weather, if you're coming up from the US, a very cheap dollar.
Fricken
Hey! I rode from Vancouver to Edmonton in August, and from Princeton to Kimberly we were pretty much on the BC epic route. Our ride was 1000 miles, 10 days, 10 miles of elevation gained (I'm Candaian but's nice round numbers when I use imperial).
On day 9, beginning on the Icefields parkway we pushed ourselves and rode 290 km, which was my biggest day of riding in my life. I could have gone further that day, I was still feeling pretty good when we got to our hotel after 14 hours in the saddle. Certainly it put the idea of racing on my mind.
I attempted Edmonton to Vancouver in August 2023. I made it to Nelson and scratched due to excessive wildfire smoke. That was my first attempt at any kind of a bicycle tour or any kind of activity that one might classify as an ultra. I went into that ride quite naive but I've learned enough since then that I'm ready to get myself into some real trouble.
Have you done the BC Epic?
avgDev
There is no guarantees as to how much time you will get in this life. Please do this now. Don't quit your job but take some time off or use the weekends and plan adventures.
I've just had a wake up call, my dog was diagnosed with cancer. Clock is always ticking.
Lio
Obligatory plug for the great Heinz Stücke.
He decided at the age of 22 to quit his job and ride his bike around the world.
...and then basically never really stopped (I think he may have been forced to retire recently but the chap's 84 now so we can cut him some slack).
There's a good documentary about him called "The Man Who Wanted to See It All".
randcraw
For those whose browsers lack WebGL2 (like Brave), here's a map of the trail: https://keepcalmandpedalonblog.com/the-eastern-divide-trail-...
smeeger
we are tantalizingly close to having a bike trail that runs east-west across the US. just missing bits in wyoming and some other places
stevage
That rider took 77 days. Each year there is a race along basically the same route, Canadian border to Mexico border. The current race record is around 13 days.
hackingonempty
That would be the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route and Tour Divide race through the Rockies. This journal follows the Eastern Divide trail through the Appalachians.
stevage
Oh! I misread. The Tour Divide goes through the Continental Divide (hence the name). Didn't realise there was an "Eastern Divide".
flowingfocus
Ultra-endurance cycling like the race you mentioned is fascinating. I once met a few contestants in a European bike race and drove alongside one. He said the best in the field sleep around 4 hours per night and do 500+ km per day.
0_____0
Depends on how long you're doing it. For a Divide length race, you're going to need more than 4 hours a night. 5 would be sustainable. 4 would work for events 3-5 days long I think.
skeeter2020
Either way, the sustained output is ridiculous. These racers go harder than me on my gravel bike, fully self supported, often on rough tracks, for 20ish hours a day, day after day.
Then at the other end of the spectrum there are lots of people who go quite slow, but for months. I'm not sure which is more impressive; both show tremendous grit but in different ways.
limaoscarjuliet
There is also RAAM, but across the country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Across_America
seadan83
FWIW - Trans-Am is the bike packing equivalent of the RAAM (unsupported vs supported):
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RadiozRadioz
How does one afford the time to do something like this?
daemonologist
I think most commonly: have minimal responsibilities to begin with (no kids, pets, business to run, etc.) If those aren't an issue, costs are pretty minimal, and it's mainly a matter of the long term career and retirement savings implications of not working for several months - those wouldn't stop you if you wanted to do it, they're just a judgement call.
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japhyr
I crossed North America four times in my twenties before I had a kid. I was a teacher, and rode west to east for two summers. Then I quite my job, and circled North America on a bike. It was the best choice I ever could have made.
I'd have a hard time riding across the country now just because my kid is still in school. But when he's out on his own, I'd like to do one more cross-country ride. I want to see how much has changed, but more importantly what has stayed the same.
Jtsummers
77 days is quite a while (and assume a few more for final transport home), but I get 5 weeks of leave a year and can rollover 6 weeks from year to year, which, with weekends, would get me 79 days. This is not even a stellar job. Of course, being away from my wife (no kids yet) for 77 days might be a hard sell, and when we do have kids that'll be off the table for a while.
Then you schedule the event to coincide with holidays. In the US, we have (depending on your employer) 3 federal holidays from May through July (Memorial, Juneteenth, 4th of July). 4 for September through November but it doesn't line up well enough to get all 4 starting with 11 weeks off (Labor Day, Columbus, Veteran's, Thanksgiving). If you're willing to travel to get a better climate for an event, you have November-January which gives you Veteran's Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and MLK.
So 3, 4, or 5 extra days on top of leave are feasible several times of the year (late spring/summer, fall, winter). That can be used to stretch your leave if you don't have enough to make it, or to give you a recovery week (or partial week).
Or, you get enough money and have no responsibilities and just quit working for 2-3 months.
lotsofpulp
> This is not even a stellar job.
I would bet you have more leave than 95%+ of W-2 workers in the US.
Jtsummers
Probably, but lower pay than most software engineers at this point in their career even excluding SV and major metros. It's a tradeoff. I could almost double my salary going across the street but I'd have to drop to 4 weeks of leave a year and lose the rollover.
EDIT:
But if I'm understanding the table you linked, for people with between 10 and 20 years of experience, 19% have > 24 days off and 43% have > 20 days off. So my base leave is above average but not extraordinary. The rollover may be, though.
insane_dreamer
Don't know about the folks on that website, but a lot of folks who do these longer rides (i.e., one or more weeks) are retired and/or older and in a good financial position to where they can take the time off (also no young kids at home).
JKCalhoun
There are smaller trails you can do over a weekend if you want to try it out.
I started out on a two day ride on a rail trail. The following fall then went on a 6 day rail trail ride.
dowager_dan99
This is far more realistic, and likely more enjoyable. Nobody should be jumping from casual weekend rides to something like the tour divide or comparable. Do an overnight or weekend, than plan a multi-day, then do a longer distance trip to figure out if you actually like it, then pick something ambitious.
BadHumans
You could take a sabbatical or they could be retired.
eat_veggies
In particular, I wonder how people set up their health insurance while on these epic bike tours. It makes sense that costs are minimal, you can have savings, etc. but insurance is usually tied to employment around here..
daemonologist
If your income has gone to/near zero in the US, you're immediately (next month) eligible for Medicaid. That gives you emergency coverage and if you're healthy enough for a long bike tour that might be sufficient. Getting prescriptions filled out of state could be a sticking point though.
null
This is one of those personal sites where you fall down a rabbit hole. I've been reading this series of posts for quite a while now because it's simply but enjoyably written. He has a nice turn of phrase:
> The let up in the weather didn't last long, though. Even though the forecast for the area had indicated a cloudy but rainless afternoon, it just started pelting down rain in buckets. There is nothing like a really cold, persistent rain to find the weak spots in your rain gear, and before long my face, chest, and feet were soaked and freezing. The rain turned what had been a mediocre day into a miserable day. It could have been worse, I guess, but only if it had rained snakes.