Bikepacking Is No Longer Just for Endurance Junkies

livemint.com:

YouTube videos of bikers on the Great Divide route during Covid, Natalia Kunze told her father she wanted to ride the trail. In 2021, Paul Kunze chaperoned his then 12-year-old daughter on a 770-mile section of the trail from Jackson Hole, Wyo., to Kalispell, Mont. “I’m still amazed she was able to accomplish that feat," he says.

“When I was that age, I thought riding 10 miles was really far." He is now 44. This summer, the father and daughter from Duluth, Minn., spent 13 days bikepacking 1,020 miles of the Great Divide route. They endured muddy, rainy weather (and a leaky tent) and had to navigate snowy mountain passes, but Paul believes part of bikepacking is being able to “embrace the suck." “You’re going to get dirty, wet, hot, cold and face adversity," he says.

"But it’s going to make you stronger, more confident and better suited to excel in other areas of your life." A wide range The Great Divide route is the Everest of bikepacking, but there is a range of trails in the U.S., from relatively short and sweet to much, much longer and punishing. Vanzyl favors the latter. In addition to the Great Divide route, he has completed the Arizona Trail, a desert route of about 800 miles that runs between the state’s northern and southern borders, and the Colorado Trail, a journey of about 500 miles that runs through the mountains between Durango and Denver.

He has suffered saddle sores and had to resort to drinking out of a cattle trough on a desolate stretch of trail in Arizona. “It’s worth a little grit to escape the crowds and be deeply immersed in nature," he says. But bikepackers don’t have to suffer.