EDMBR....?

[stevew]

This look pretty ambitious. The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is an vaguely exciting trail, which has been well considered and planned. It took a lot of time and money by the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) to map it out, and create something challenging yet achievable with basic backcountry skills. The route has a real soul. It’s funded partly by bike tourers and others sponsoring sections of the trail.

The originators of travel on this route were Mike and Dan Moe, who are two adventurers from the 70s and 80s. They first walked the true Continental Divide, then biked it. Their life story is well worth reading all you can about. Of course John Stamstad pioneered the ‘race’. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stamstad

http://www.outsideonline.com/adventure- ... l?page=all
http://www.adventurecycling.org/resourc ... others.pdf
http://krefs.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/coi ... ivide.html

Nicolas Senie has stepped up and is currently Time Trialling a 1000 mile European Route. He's completed the Tour Divide.
Calais - Nice
http://trackleaders.com/calaisnice
His routes uses the Chemins du Soleil route.
http://www.grande-traversee-alpes.com/chemins-du-soleil

I'm preatty excited about this at the moment and hoping once he's laid down a marker he'll promote an event next year.

Incidentally, (GDMBR) stands for the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route, as mapped by ACA:
http://www.adventurecycling.org/routes/greatdivide.cfm/
Then there are two races on the route, Great Divide Race (GDR), and the Tour Divide (TD).

Good luck.

[gairym]

Good work there Gairy ... from small acorns, blah blah blah

Thanks - this particular acorn has quite a bit of growing to do!

This look pretty ambitious.

Yep - It's nothing if not ambitious (except maybe overly-ambitious)!

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is an vaguely exciting trail, which has been well considered and planned. It took a lot of time and money by the Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) to map it out, and create something challenging yet achievable with basic backcountry skills.

I've not ridden the GDMBR and so I may be talking out of my ass but from what I've seen (on home videos etc...) it's relatively technically tame and relies more on it's remote nature and sheer scale to give it it's 'soul'.

If something vaguely similar eventually grows from this little acorn then I think that the resulting trail would be very different in character.

There'd likely be more 'technically challenging' trails (which appeals to me personally) but overall less 'true wilderness' (which is a shame but it's central Europe - there's only so far you can be from civilisation).

It’s funded partly by bike tourers and others sponsoring sections of the trail.

The plan is to utilise existing trails and so hopefully this is one bullet that'll be pre-dodged.

Nicolas Senie has stepped up and is currently Time Trialling a 1000 mile European Route. He's completed the Tour Divide.Calais - Nice

Yeah, I've seen this before. The 2nd half of the route looks really good (especially Les Chemins du Soleil which I've ridden some amazing parts of!) but to be honest the first bit from the Calais through to Germany is pretty uninspiring - don't get me wrong it'd be nice touring but it's not 'mountain biking' which is what I envisage might be an advantage of following the watershed (as it's always in the hills!).

I'm not knocking this route and am also excited to see where it goes but it's a different beast than I'm imagining for the 'Euro Divide'.

There's every chance that this little endeavour will come to nothing as the odds are against everything falling into place for this to come off successfully but if I don't give it some time and effort and see what happens I'll never know.....

Thanks for all of the historical/informative links as it's really useful to see where and how these things came about and just plain interesting to read about the folks who've been there and done it!

Now.....does anyone fancy mapping Spain, Switzerland, Austria and/or Germany....?

Gairy.

[Pawel]

I can take Czech - South Polish part

[stevew]

http://www.1000miles.cz/

[slugwash]

.....does anyone fancy mapping Spain, Switzerland, Austria and/or Germany....?

Yes. Unfortunately I don't think I'd get neither a long enough sabbatical from work or the necessary domestic clearance :(

However, for anyone plotting a route across the mountains of northern Spain then this site is worth checking out. In fact, you could contact the guys who run it and get them on the case. They seem to relish digging out new routes in their backyard ...

http://cantabriaenbici.es/mapa-en.html

[stevew]

Yes, you could describe the Divide Route as technically tame, but it is 2,700 mile long, and is pretty challenging. There are some easy sections, but they don’t seem to come for free, and some sections, although not 'technical', can be physically demanding with rough roads and climbing. A good 10 mile push though snow climbing over avalanche debris in Montana gives you a good workout, so does 50 miles of sandy corrugations, or a few miles dragging a 40 kilo mud clogged bike. On paper or in pictures things can look easy, but they don’t tell the full story and many other elements such as the weather can add to physical toll. Underestimating the difficulty of a section and subsequently its duration with food and water planning can punish you too. In essence I’m saying over that distance and that many days riding, it feels hard enough.

My $0.02 recommendation is to race the Divide a couple of times to get an understanding of the demands and challenges of racing that distance, and that will help you design a good course. I would also recommend ITTing the course you design in one go, since riding sections will not give you a feel for how a course works as a whole, or how long you're likely to be on it, and the total physical demand. Plotting something on a map is easy, but building a route of that distance you want to live on for maybe a month, that is an acceptable physical challenge in a reasonable timeframe, is going to be a big project.

Races like the Colorado Trail Race and Arizona Trail Race offer more demanding 'technical' terrain, but are much shorter, and the distances seem appropriate. Riding technical singletrack for 12+ hours a day is tough in multi-day riding. Fatigue builds. Six days of that on the CTR was enough for me. The concept of 3000 miles of technical mountain biking is really pushing the boundaries. The guys pushing the limits on the tough US courses at the moment are so far ahead of any riders in the UK it can be easy to misjudge the race difficulty. Again, I think it’d be really worth riding those shorter technical courses too, to compare and get a feel for where you want to pitch this route with combined difficulty and distance.

[gairym]

Stevew,

Don't get me wrong - my naming the GDMBR as 'technically tame' wasn't me being negative about it but more just an observation about one of it's characteristics.

I was trying to highlight that any trail which followed the watershed in Europe would inherently be more of a technical trail than it's American counterpart simply due to the geography/geology of the continents involved.

I hear everything you're saying about getting to know those races/routes better (and I'd love to) but it still wouldn't alter the above fact.

To attempt to too closely emulate the GDMBR would likely fail as without staying true to the nature of the land through which a trail passes the essence of the thing would be lost.

You're right all that you're saying but I won't be entering any of those races for the same reason that I'm trying to start planning an EDMBR - I don't want to go to the states and ride in the states - I want to ride trails in Europe.

The whole purpose of this project is to create a truly EDMBR not a European-GDMBR.

I've taken the first steps into sampling the long-distance riding and routes that Europe has to offer and I plan to continue this 'research' in order to more fully understand what exactly it is that this route could (and should) be.

Maybe one of the reasons for some of the differences between the US and European bikepacking and ultra-long-distance scenes is the very terrain on which they take place and, if so, it's important that any EDMBR be based on the roots of European riding and not simply a photocopy of an existing state-side format.

See where I'm coming from....?

I apologise if it came across like I was belittling the GDMBR (far from it!) as I've got nothing but respect for all those who're mental (in a good way) enough to give it a pop!

Hope this clarifies what I'm getting at a little.

Gairy.

(p.s. sorry to you others who've responded - i'll be in touch but i've got to go make dinner.....)

[stevew]

Sure, I get what you want, and it's your vision. I just use the US because I don't know any other long distance races. Racing some long and short routes of different technical demand though I think would put you in a good position to design a ~3000 mile course.

I was trying to highlight that any trail which followed the watershed in Europe would inherently be more of a technical trail than it's American counterpart simply due to the geography/geology of the continents involved.

I'm not sure where this information comes from? Taking a pure guess myself, I would have expected the US Continental Divide to be tougher backcoutry, since so much land in Europe in managed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Divide_Trail

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route only approximates it, designed to use suitable roads for mountain bike touring, and aiming to hit a town for resupply about every 100 miles.

I'm just saying it can be easy to get carried away on paper planning something, and linking existing rides and routes up, wanting great mountain biking, big climbing and singletrack statistics, but how that transforms into such a long race is a different thing. In my limited fitness and experience of racing, having raced five of the US routes and ridden and toured in Europe and further afield, I think there's a balance to be sought between technical difficulty and distance for these things. The Divide is a 10-11 mph moving average, the CTR and AZTR about 6-7 mph. At the extreme end of the scale, 14 hours a day moving at 7 mph average for 3000 means 31 days on the trail for a rider way beyond my capabilities. The physical demands of that kind of riding, for that long, are way out there at the moment. Of course that's not to say this isn't the future and natural progression, however I just think it's worth keeping it all in mind.

[Bearbonesnorm]

Yeah, the time frame's very important ... make it too long and you'll possibly find that no one is able to race it, due to outside factors and time restraints.

[gairym]

Sure, I get what you want, and it's your vision.

That's true but this idea is only as good as it is workable for those interested in this kind of riding (and you seem like a prime example). It's great that you're taking the time to chat with me about this as you've clearly ridden more of these kind of events/courses/races than I have and so I appreciated your input.

Racing some long and short routes of different technical demand though I think would put you in a good position to design a ~3000 mile course.

Oh sure. I'm working on it! My experience before a year ago was pretty much two-fold with mountain biking and backpacking as separate entities. Only in this last year have I combined the two and so I'm very much a novice in many areas.

I'm not sure where this information comes from? Taking a pure guess myself, I would have expected the US Continental Divide to be tougher backcoutry, since so much land in Europe in managed.

That's kind of my point though. As Europe is so managed there isn't really a network of dirt roads as there are covering the backcountry of the US. So the route choices for something like this seem to be either actual roads of pre-existing footpaths/trails.

That's why I'm thinking that something like a EDMBR route would either end up being more or less technical than it's US counterpart. Less technical and it might as well be a quiet road route and so, whilst there are many double-track and fireroad trails criss-crossing Europe, my research/riding/experience so far has lead me to think that a EDMBR would end up being more twisty, rocky tracks than the GDMBR (with accompanying good and bad repercussions).

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route only approximates it, designed to use suitable roads for mountain bike touring, and aiming to hit a town for resupply about every 100 miles.

Yeah, I need to do a LOT more research before making any route choices as it may be the case that the end route does the same (for the same reasons you point out) or not (as I only really know the French section - and only parts of that).

I'm just saying it can be easy to get carried away on paper planning something, and linking existing rides and routes up, wanting great mountain biking, big climbing and singletrack statistics, but how that transforms into such a long race is a different thing. In my limited fitness and experience of racing, having raced five of the US routes and ridden and toured in Europe and further afield, I think there's a balance to be sought between technical difficulty and distance for these things

Yeah, the time frame's very important ... make it too long and you'll possibly find that no one is able to race it, due to outside factors and time restraints.

Both very good points!

Clearly many many hours/days/years of work and thought needs to go into this and I'm only just sniffing around the beginnings of it as a concept.

I would very much like for this to be bigger than me (as I'm one, relatively inexperienced, dude without a whole lot of resources or time) and so the more help and advice like the above the better!

Cheers fellas, Gairy.

[adjustablewench]

Sounds like a brilliant idea, happy to help in anyway I can - probably can't do much but happy to do internet research into a section if that helps.

At which point going eastwards would you no longer be able to travel freely on an European passport? Maybe that would be a sensible ending, initially at least

[gairym]

Splendid!

So if/when things get as far as the beginning of plotting a route I've got offers of assistance from:

Pawel
Slugwash (maybe? if I can find something small enough to not anger your wife/other time commitments?)
Adjustablewench

Thanks fellas - very much appreciated.

Once things begin to take some kind of shape (assuming they eventually do) I'll give you a shout and see if you're still interested in being involved.

I would imagine that the extent to which anyone is involved could be scaled-up/down to suit their available free-time.

If someone has only got a very small amount of time and yet would still like to help then I'm sure that there'd be useful little bits of research and info gathering that could be done.

Maybe, I'll put a list up on the site of required tasks (both large and small) and then if someone pipes up with an offer to help then they can peruse the list and see if there's anything on there that they fancy taking on.

Anyone else want to throw their name into the ring with regards to either being directly involved or offering a little time/effort at some future point....?

Cheers, Gairy.

[Taylor]

During the week the wife works/stays in London village so I'll be free to do something on an evening. It'll stop me looking for stuff to buy on the internet.

[Anthony]

It might be worth dropping an email to Aiden Harding to get some tips from how his inaugural EWE route/race went.

Very similar in that he wanted a route with a more technical nature.

I keep watching this thread with interest, with baby #2 due anytime sadly my time is somewhat restricted but I'd be up for input where I can.

[Pawel]

At which point going eastwards would you no longer be able to travel freely on an European passport? Maybe that would be a sensible ending, initially at least

polish east border is this point actually, then You have to pass polish/ukrainian border with border post here http://goo.gl/maps/q3CFM, to enter Belarus You need a visa.
You can pass polish/czech and polish/slovakian borders free where trail pass it

[adjustablewench]

It seems to make sense to take it up to the border - and judging by the pics posted and the info on the riding in Slovakia thread it also looks amazing scenery at that end and potentially more forest track to keep the speed up a bit. Very inspiring ....

Can we start now??? :)

[Blackhound]

Certainly a project gairy.

I could help seeing as I am retired, main problem is I am nowhere near the route. Could contribute something though. Let me know.

Aidan's E-W-E was a collaborative project so that could work. What about the Grenzstein trophy boys? They maybe able to contribute something for Germany or offer advice.

Not looked at in detail but this may *may* help on some sections, gpx tracks can be pulled off:

http://cycling.lonvia.de/en/

[Chew]

Maybe worth following:

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic ... ide-france

Looks like the E4 through Bavaria is a winner already

[gairym]

howdy all,

thanks for the continued posts and interest. i've been too busy to devote much (any) time to this idea in the last few days but i'll get to it just as soon as i get the chance.

apologies, gairy.

[Pawel]

Found really good write up of Carpathian part of divide - sorry polish only http://www.cotg.pttk.pl/encyklopedia_tr ... 57&szukaj= , already draw half of it on map, most of it going thru hiking trails or really close to them. When I finish it , I'll uploud it on the interweb