Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25126
MAP, ADVENTURE CYCLING ASSOCIATION The 2.468- mile-long Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is the longest bike route in the world. It runs the length of the United States from north to south. from the Canadian (Port of Roosville) to the Mexican border (Anteloppe Wells). The route follows a combination of fire-access roads. jeep trails. logging roads. some pavement (even a little interstate) and sparse singletrack. It crosses the Continental Divide about 27 times and traces the ridge of the Rocky Mountains through Montana. Idaho. Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. Riding an average of 40 miles a day, it takes about 10 weeks to ride the whole route. You'U pass through places like Steamboat Springs-the "Fifth Avenue" of the route-and stretches of New Mexico where you could go for three days without a food or water stop. The majority of the route lies somewhere in between. The only thing that's for sure, you won't be seeing many golden arches. In the summer of 1998, my companion Jan Duprey and I rode the length of America's longest mountain bike route from north to south. We were exposed to the elements and to ourselves. We were self-contained , each lugging our equipment in a one-wheel gear trailer. The ride was an exercise in dealing with the remote, from beginning to end. The wheels started spin ning at the British Columbia border some 60 miles north of Whitefish, Montana, and didn't finish unti l the stop sign at the Mexican border, south of Silver City, New Mexico, where thorny goathead plants flatten ti res seemingly at wil l. The ll-week summerlong adventure was ripe with road rash and Ramen. It was complete with cact i, cattle and real whip-snapping cowboys. Horns, heads and hides dominated the landscape. We went from riding through the land of the Unabomber to filtering water from cattle tanks and not minding the bobbing surface surfers too much. Strangers became friend s. They invited us in for brief glimpses of their lives. There was the couple who told us to get off their land (we were alleged ly trespassing) and then invited us into their home for dinner. But that was Montana. When a f ierce hailstorm caught us by surprise, hunters in New Mexico took us into their camp, wrapped our shivering selves in blankets, pumped us with coffee and then treated us to a dinner of elk burgers, green chilies and torti llas washed down with copious amounts of free-flowing cerveza. 32 There was the guy in tiny Platoro, Colorado, who opened up his one-room ca bin to us, gave us a tour and then left us there for two days alone. He asked that we close up before we left and take the four trout he had caught. Pretty tasty over an open fire. . There was the driver who had a painted face. We weren't all that concerned because we had seen others like it. This was the forest of northern New Mexico, where. if you stuck your face (painted or not) right up to the giant ponderosa pines, you could whiff butterscotch. The driver was a bow hunter in camouflage. He stopped his pickup on the winding dirt road, rolled down the window and in a thick Arkansas twang bellowed, "There's one thing I got to know." "What's that?" I replied . "Where the hel l are you going?" "Mexico." An arrow of disbelief seemed to pierce him. "You got it licked. You got it licked then," he sa id . Yeah, we licked it all right, and eventually got to the lonely border station of Antelope Wells in New Mexico's boot heel. But there's a whole lot of mud, ruts, flats, cacti, sand, mountain s, moose, snakes and antelope when you mountain bike from Canada to Mexico along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route. There's also not a whole lot of stuff you would expect like water, showers, toi lets, grocery stores and bike shops.