In June 2025, Josh Reid was one of about 250 starters of the iconic Tour Divide, a 2,700-mile off-road bikepacking race that takes riders from Southern Canada to the border between the United States and Mexico. The route traces the Continental Divide, the crest of the Rocky Mountains that separates the watersheds of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This is his account of the experience, in his own words.
The Tour Divide is referred to as a race, but it has no offiical organizer and no entry fee. There is no support crew, and there's no tape at the finish line. 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; of hospitality, pain, and killer views, of companionship, joy, and junk food.
For ultra-distance cyclists the Tour Divide is the world’s most iconic event and the 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 are left feeling 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 together. Or, when there were no indoor accomodations available, we’d spread our sleeping bags and bivvy bags in the same locale. We’d also sleep in sheltered holes in the ground, known to riders as "Montana Hiltons," or post offices which, in small rural 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 ranches, 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 rattlesnakes.
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 constant encounter with wildlife, ranging from typical critters such as small jackrabbits and tiny chipmunks to wild horses, wolves and mountain lions. Most riders carry bear spray as bikepackers have been attacked at night by grizzly bears en route, though this is thankfully rare.
The rugged, challenging route runs from Canada’s Banff to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, on the US-Mexican border. The route travels through Alberta and British Columbia, and then the 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 our crew that rode closely together missed the worst of the storms, tackling 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 final push to the finish took 42 hours to cover 300 miles. I had a one-hour nap in that stretch, shorter than some people's cafe stops.
I rode the route on a Giant Revolt X Advanced Pro. The suspension fork preserved my sanity on some of the technical singletrack and smoothed out some of the washboard roads—those corrugated ripples are pure evil.
In my 78-minute film of the trip, I don’t explain how soul-destroying those washboard sections can be. Instead, I explore why the Tour Divide remains the primary objective of almost every ultra-distance cyclist.
