Tour Divide 2025
In June 2025 I was one of 250 or so starters of the 2025 edition of the iconic Tour Divide, a 2,700-mile off-road bikepacking race—starting annually on the second Friday of June —that takes riders from southern Canada to the US-Mexico border on mostly elevated dirt trails following the Continental Divide, the watershed between mountain ranges.
I say “race,” but the Tour Divide has no organizer, no entry fee, no support crew, and no finishing tape. It’s just you against a digital “broom wagon.” This moving map dot doesn’t sleep; it keeps riding at a dispiritingly steady pace, set to finish after 25 days of virtual riding. The dot doesn’t get to experience the America we experience: an America of dirt, mountains, and sweat; an America of hospitality, pain, and killer views; an America of companionship, joy, and junk food.
For ultra distance cyclists the Tour Divide is *the* world’s most iconic event and one that ought to be tackled at least once in a rider’s lifetime. Some masochists do it more than once; many scratch part way through and they feel compelled to give it another go; others do it on singlespeeds or– shout out to John and Mira–with a dog in a pannier rack tray.
I completed this year’s event in 21 days 16 hours and 31 minutes, riding the same daily distance as seven or so others. We’d arrive at motels at similar times and would often bunk up together. Or—when there were no indoor accomodation was available—we’d spread our sleeping bags and bivvybags in the same locale. We’d also sleep in pit toilets—sheltered holes in the ground, known to riders as Montana Hilton’s—or post offices which, in small rual townships, are, rather wonderfully, open for 24 hours. Some of these lock-box buildings even had signs outside saying “cycling friendly,” as did many of the ranchs, farms, and tiny local shops that we passed.
Because of a storm I was glad to bed down for a few hours in the Como post office in Colorado, and another post office in New Mexico was a safe haven from scorpions and rattle snakes.
The Tour Divide is an eating contest, of course—it’s critical to fuel well even though the only food available might be burgers, fries, and onion rings—but it’s also a wildlife fest, with typical critters such as small jackrabbits and tiny chipmunks, through to rather larger wild horses, wolves and mountain lions. Almost all riders carry bear spray—bike tourists have been mauled at night by grizzly bears en route, although this is thankfully rare.
The rugged, challenging route— from Canada’s Banff to Antelope Wells on the US-Mexican border—takes in Canada’s Alberta and British Columbia, and then the US states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and finally New Mexico. Poor weather is normally one of the challenges on this race but by luck rather than design I and the few others riding close together missed the worst of the storms, and tackled the steep hike-a-bike sections in relative comfort.
Some days we’d ride for 18 hours, completing just shy of 200 miles between sleeps, but most were 120-mile days. The last push to the finish took 42 hours to cover 300 miles. I had an hour nap in that stretch but then I’d argue people have longer cafe stops than that.
I rode the route on a Giant Revolt X. The suspension fork saved my sanity on some of the technical singletrack and smoothed out some of the washboard roads. These corrugated ripples are pure evil.
In my 78-minute film of the trip—now out on YouTube—I don’t explain how soul destroying these washboard sections can be. Instead, I explore why the Tour Divide remains the go-to goal of almost every ultra distance cyclist.
