TOUR DIVIDE 2024 RACE COVERAGE DAY1: An early night in Fernie

Welcome to my daily coverage of the 2024 Tour Divide. The Tour Divide is a 2700mile bikepacking race traversing the length of the USA. The Tour Divide starts in Banff, Canada and finishes at Antelope Wells on the USA/Mexico border.

The record for bikepacking the Tour Divide is help by the late Mike Hall and is 13 days 22hours and 51minutes set in 2016.

Lael Wilcox currently holds the women’s Tour Divide record with a time of 15 days 10 hours 59 minutes.

A huge thank you to Redshift for their support of the race updates, check out their website here:
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Check out Bikepacking.com’s race preview here:

2024 Tour Divide Preview: Conditions, Route Updates, Who to Watch

See a details route map on ridewithgps.com here:
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/43161161

Over 200 bike packers are lining up for the 2024 Tour Divide. I will be bringing daily updates from the event as I follow the race tracker with further insight into the race route including video shot on the race. I hope I can bring the race to life!

The 2024 Tour Divide race tracker can be found here:
http://trackleaders.com/tourdivide24

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hello and welcome to my daily coverage of the 2024 tour divide my name is Josh ibit and every single day for the next two or three weeks I’m going to be doing morning updates having a look at the dots giving a bit of insight into the race route trying to find some stories on the road I’ve got a few people out there who are going to be sending me updates and yeah let’s um let’s join me on this journey and and let’s see where we go uh before we go any further I just want to say a big thank you to the guys over at redshift for sponsoring this coverage and making it possible um I’ll dip into sort of their products a little bit as I go on through the next few weeks but yeah Big shout out to those guys um because uh their support makes this thing happen so yeah cheers for that um and also a big thank you to the guys over at bikepacking.com for supporting me on this I was part of their tour divide preview last week so uh have a look on on their website they’ve got a really good page all about the weather um the conditions that were expected there’s some root changes as well so there’s some details about that um and we had an in-depth discussion about some of the favorites myself Hannah Alexandra and Neil um so check out that video and hopefully that’ll give you a bit of a backdrop as to the the race and what’s happening and um yeah let’s dive into it so let’s have a little look at the route so um I’m I’m going to look at riber GPS to um get into more detail um they’ve got this fantastic resource uh with all the root sort of points of interest and stuff um it’s based on the 2023 route um but you can see it gives you a bit more detail as to um where the resupplies are where water spots are where you might be able to sleep this was put together by Sarah swallow um it’s a really good resource um however there there are a few root changes um for the 2024 Edition they’re mostly in New Mexico um so there’s also an updated version of this um but it’s a really good resource to um to look at and yeah really really helpful and it’s um it shows all the Summits and things like that so yeah really good to look at and get some extra info um around the race uh the race itself is on track leaders this is probably the original race tracking website there’s plenty more out there now but to be honest this is my favorite this is uh reminds me of the good days do watching the early tour divides um it’s nothing fancy uh but there’s plenty of information on there and yeah you can really dig into it so we’ll be looking at that a lot over the next few weeks um so yeah let’s let’s let’s see what’s going on in this race so as you can see we’re 17 hours 34 minutes in I shall put it on on to full screen right now um and uh yeah all the Riders uh spread out pretty much all the way from bamp all the way along um so the first section of the tour divide runs through Canada it’s about 250 Mi to the Canadian border um the US border at Eureka and uh it’s it’s not necessarily the the toughest part of the route on paper however conditions can be tough um obviously the further north you are the worth worse the weather tends to be and if you’ve watched that uh bikepacking.com preview you’ll know that basically the the weather’s looking really unsettled up north it’s quite cold the spring has been quite cold and um quite wet in in the north especially Montana so there there is snow in places and it could be muddy um on some of the tracks so it’s going to be a rough few days to start for this um for this tour divide um so we’re going to see how that affects the race early on um now there there are a few favor and as you can see um from the the sort of order on the side there the Riders we looked at on on the men’s and the women’s stage um lineup on the the bikepacking.com preview Liam Glenn uck bolom he’s last year’s winner um Alex Schulz Anna Jager she won the female race in 2022 and eus lva they’re all right up there at the moment and um interestingly there was um a bit of a lead pack that set off this morning obiously this is the first day of a 2,700 mile race so you can’t read too much into it um but Orrick yustinus and Lawrence tendam you may recognize that name um if you follow professional cycling um they they all basically took off at the front of the pack and they reached um Fernie first um but they they reached it about 700 p.m. um and then stopped so um so then if we look at the race flow here so the race flow essentially shows the moving time and the stop time so a horizontal line here is stopped and moving time obviously the faster you’re moving the the steeper the line is uh and the slower you’re moving um the faster it is sorry the the flatter the line is uh and you can see or and uh eus reached Fernie first and they’ve just had a massive stop in a hotel and then Liam and Thomas Fabian have basically caught up not really had a sleep it doesn’t look like um Thomas or Jimmy Ashby have slept toall yet and they’ve basically snuck ahead um so so it’s kind of it’s interesting um there’s a couple of theories as why that could be and I suspect it’s due to the weather um but let’s go back a step let’s have a little look at the course and see what they’ve ridden over so far we’ll drop onto R GPS zoom in a little bit and we can see that Fernie is the first major town basically on the route um there is some some resupply further up um but starting in bamp and heading to fery there’s there’s not an awful lot um there’s Bolton Creek there’s a small shop there um but you’re pretty much on your own uh running parallel in the mountains to sort of the main the main highways um but there’s a big mountain range between you and any kind of resupply um there’s a few climbs uh there’s elk pass um which is fairly steep um which is uh where is it down here that’s Coco claims so yeah uh further north um which isn’t isn’t particularly hard it’s just short and steep um but the big the big test is Coco claims which you can see this dog leg here um the old Route used to go straight down the highway um but that changed and basically there’s a massive hiker bike so let’s have a little look um I’ve got some video actually from Sophie and sahil sent sent some video over from uh previous years and um let’s have a little look so this is the youth hostel in the center of bamp where where the race starts uh so this is from 2022 and as you can see the Gathering is outside the youth hostel and everyone sets off they’ve introduced waves now so uh basically the there’s so many people starting the tour divide that um they decided to or the organizers decided to or no I think the national park actually insisted that the organizers set Riders off in smaller groups just to spread things out a little um so this was first wave uh this is Alex pilton um I managed to get my hands on this footage so that was the first wave nice and leisurely starting off and as you can see um weather I’m I’m going to talk about the weather a lot I’m British sorry about that um it’s looking kind of overcast and as I said it’s it’s looking like there’s going to be mixed conditions over the coming days and um as soon as you get up high in the mountains it it can be very unpredictable and let’s have another look um some of sofin videos so this I think this is over the top of el pass now this is 2022 again the weather was pretty bad in 2022 um and you can see here that it kind of it can get quite muddy you can see the TI tracks um it dries and if the sun comes out it can dry quite quick but if it’s wet it was really sticky I’ve written this when it’s basically been like peanut butter um when I tore out to the start in 2022 it was pretty Grim I’ve not heard direct reports yet from anyone out there as to what the conditions have been like on the ground um but I suspect it is very similar um and then Coco claims there’s there’s photos floating around on the the Facebook groups um showing snow a lot of the way up Coco claims to be honest I I wouldn’t thought it make an awful lot of difference this was this was me actually in 2022 I ended up with sopan but you can see basically your your hiking up um it’s a stream bed lower down and then it’s just a rough double track there’s there’s not really any way you can ride up it um not efficiently anyway and uh yeah it’s it’s in a deep valley so if there’s snow in there there’s not always going to be much sunlight to melt it off um so yeah I suspect that it was quite snowy but I don’t think it would probably slow you down too much um you know hiking through snow or hiking over Rocky terrain if it’s if it’s firm that is um there’s not an awful lot of difference um so yeah so that was Coco claims and then as I said the Riders reached Fernie and it looks like the leaders got in about 700 p.m. and they stopped early and that’s kind of quite unusual um normally most Riders do push on through um certainly late I mean 2022 sophan didn’t stop for the first couple of nights not not significantly anyway um so it looks like uck yustinus um Lawrence him down they they’re riding conservatively um and then other Riders um you know Liam we talked about him in the preview on on B packing.com uh he’s he’s pushed through it does look like he’s slept now um 41 minutes ago so maybe is having a little nap or maybe his track is just not working it’s it’s hard to tell sometimes um so he’s on it’s like Flathead pass um and then yeah so these guys haven’t really slept Jam Ashby um Australian uh he rides he’s he’s uh rides for curv bikes um met him in the curve crew out in South Africa for the rhino run a few years ago they’re great guys uh we’ve got Dan Connell Dirty Dan he’s up there he’s ridden this route um three or four times now I believe um so yeah he read it last year so he knows what he’s doing as well um Raymond friedr um a new name for me so we’ll have to have a look and see how he’s going on olick so he had a sleep um he basically stopped at 7: and then started again 4 hours later so 11:00 so hid an early sleep now there’s a couple of theories as to why they’d be doing that um as I said the weather is looking pretty pretty Grim um I’ll put the the weather layer on there um and you can see on windy it’s just just cold cold air and when you’re in the mountains if it rains up high you know that’s going to be snow um and it’s looking cold all the way through Montana pretty much um until you get basically further further south um so yeah it’s uh it’s going to be interesting to see um see how it pans out to be honest um it’s uh it’s probably a case of oric and yustinus have decided to rest early um and then ride really really hard over the next few days probably trying to get to somewhere like um I suspect um uh Columbia Falls um so let’s look at on the toride rout on on Rob GPS so white fish in Columbia Falls you’ve got red red Le red Meadow Lake there’s definitely snow up there there was reports of it on the Facebook group um you got Whitefish divide as well you can see on the the elevation at the bottom here there’s two big climbs um and they’ve also got goon pass as well now goon pass has definitely got snow on it um there’s been reports of it there were snowing on 2022 um so that’s the big climb before the Border as you can see here it’s it’s quite a high peak um so that’s going to be tricky so I suspect that some of the some of the Riders have have taken an early sleep um and they’re going to push through the bad conditions um and try and sleep somewhere around here in a hotel playing it conservatively um and then pushing on later in the race uh so it’s going to be really interesting to see um as always um let’s uh let’s keep sort of this pretty much um like a group discussion as well so if you’ve got any comments or anything like that put them down below um also if you’ve if you know any people that are out there racing um then get them to drop me a message on Instagram um I love to hear from people I’ve got a few people sending me voice notes and video updates through the men’s and women’s field uh but yeah if you’ve got any favorites let me know if you’ve got any intel let me know um it’d be great to bring this to everyone and yeah I’m looking forward to seeing how the race develops over the coming days so keep posted um don’t forget to follow me so you don’t miss anything and I’ll catch you tomorrow and hopefully we’ll we’ll have a bit more um insight into what what did happen on that first night um and see see how the dots are going see if Anna Jager is um still leading the women’s field and pushing pushing up with the men um I did see also that that Megan hackam was um a pre-race favorite she’s in fery as well so um there’s there’s an interesting kind of um plotline coming along so let’s see how it goes I’ll do another update tomorrow so thanks for watching and I’ll catch you in the next one