Adirondack Sports December 2023

COMMUNITY
DECEMBER 2023 19
Bikepacking the Great Divide
DAY 9 - SUNRISE
FROM CAMPSITE
IN SPRAY VALLEY
PROVINCIAL PARK
IN ALBERTA.
DAY 1 - RIDING THE
SINGLETRACK IN
JASPER NATIONAL PARK.
By Ed Gravelle
The Great Divide Mountain Bike
Route is the longest mostly off-pavement
bikepacking route in the world.
Beginning in Jasper National Park in the
Canadian Rocky Mountains, the course
travels to Banff and through the states of
Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, and
New Mexico before ending at the Mexican
border in Antelope Wells. Along the approximate
3,100-mile circuitous path, the route
crosses the continental divide about 30 times
while gaining and losing some 200,000 feet
in elevation. The surfaces include approximately
2,100 miles of dirt road, 60 miles of singletrack,
900 miles of paved road, and 50 miles of paved bike path.
These details were taken from the Adventure Cycling
Association website, which I recommend as a great source
of information if you want to know more about the route:
adventurecycling.org. From the website you can also
purchase hard copy maps and/or download the course
to most GPS equipped bike computers.
Getting to the start turned out to be one of the hardest
parts of this trip. After my flight landed in Edmonton, I
learned my bike box had been swallowed by the blackhole
of the airline’s lost luggage system. Six days later, after I
had returned home, I was notified that my bike box was
safe and sound back in Canada. I returned to Edmonton,
shuttled five hours to Jasper and finally got started on my
solo trip south the morning of August 11.
ED AND HIS BIKE AT
THE STARTING POINT
IN JASPER, ALBERTA
ON AUGUST 11.
The trail did not disappoint as I immediately entered
a 15-mile stretch of the most spectacular singletrack and
scenery I had ever seen. I shed tears of joy at the beauty
of it all as I passed by herds of elk, big horn sheep, and
streams and lakes of crystal clear to turquoise green
and blue colored water all set against the majesty of the
Canadian Rocky Mountains.
All along the route, the views and terrain were so much
different than I am used to seeing along the East Coast. I
travelled through diverse regions featuring steep climbs in
thick woods, gently rolling hills on wide open plains with
no trees in sight, snow-capped mountains, alpine meadows,
blue ribbon trout streams and mountain lakes, high
deserts, mesas and volcanic formations. I passed by or
through areas we have all heard of such as Banff, Glacier,
Yellowstone, and Grand Teton national parks, and cities
See COMMUNITY 20 ▶