The Divide | Lachlan Morton | Explore series | Presented by Wahoo

It’s 100 miles to the next gas station, 100 miles from the last one. It’s 100 miles from anywhere, to anywhere.

And it’s the bucket list ride that Lachlan Morton spent years dreaming about.

Starting in Banff, Alberta, Canada and ending 2,671 miles later in Antelope Wells, New Mexico, USA, the divide route is as beautiful as it is rugged, as ambitious as it is empty. During his two weeks on the trail, Lachlan felt more scared, more cold, more capable, and more alive than ever.

Enjoy our latest EF Pro Cycling Explore film, “The Divide,” presented by Wahoo.

#ExploreTheWorld #Wahooligan

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E since I finished it I’ve just been like onto the next onto the next onto the next on the next and makes it hard to like properly process it I’ve tried not to spend too much time talking about the ride just cuz I need like enough time to think about it myself

It’s definitely like a deeply personal feeling the effort required was something that makes it hard to like articulate or share with people like how it Feels there’s always so much chatter with like you know there’s a film crew I know how I did it so like don’t care but I also just sensitive so if I see one thing about it’s not bid then like I take it to heart the record is what it what it

Is I don’t consider myself the owner of it or whatever I just went and did the ride the way I did it and like it was a hell of an Adventure I’ve wanted to do it for a number of years and just because of the length and duration it’s been like really hard to fit into a calendar but I managed to like wedge it in this year between a bunch of racing feels good to finally be here somewhat

Organized so the route is the tour divide route it runs from bamp Canada all the way down to anope Wells which is the border of the US and Mexico it’s one of the like original bike packing routes it’s definitely got a lot of prestige and it’s like one for the bucket list I

Think for anyone who is into bike packing there’s like a little bit of um impending doing before cuz you’re like why I didn’t have to do this I could just go not not do this Today I’d like to ride as far as I can each day I like the intensity of approaching a route that way I’ve set like a minimum of 6 hours stopped each night uh so I can get like good sleep 6 hours a day is a very long

Time to be stopped which in terms of going as fast as you can limits the distance you can cover each T I’m kind of interested to know if there’s like a point where resting pays Off Frey Bears woles cougars winks and Wolverine and hug the old chain anyway I think I’m late I crack on nice to meet you guys see oh good Just got off that uh lar Road here just some really beautiful little single track here having a great Morning Yeah this fire is literally burning just the other side of the river hey doesn’t look great up there yeah not lobbing this seems that the fire moved over a bit it gets any worse I think I’ll have to go back we’ll see so I I rode up uh to try and rejoin

But close roads and then I heard that where the RO goes on the other side there actual fire burning so not going to take my chances over there again i’ have found a nice rout on some sweet single Track [Applause] It’s so nice it just know you through the night like it this takes away all that like anxiety like half hour stop whatever even though like like I would never stop this early normally I got have to so i’ think just going to it’s going to be early start

Though that’s is probably the shortest day I’ll do freeing hasn’t sto raining the whole day it was so cold up the on top of those Mountains It actually never stopped raining everything I have is just SM I knew I wasn’t going to be camping I was pretty nervous before I started once you set off you kind of start to realize like yeah I got everything I need I know what I’m doing now yeah the idea of being fast it’s not absolutely flat out everywhere there’s a lot of different things that impact how fast you can do

It all right de with that Stomach You’re cutely aware of time because it just like runs and runs and runs you have to divvy out enough effort as well as manage different things that impact your speed like each day weather to terrain to like your feelings to food stops and getting water and all those things where you are on

Like a day-to-day basis I’m like very aware of but then in the grand scheme of things I wasn’t keeping track of what day I was on or what mile I was at yeah how you doing not too bad better been was yeah I got to find a vegetable [Applause] somewhere oh [Applause]

Sus Body Hit dry this puppy out Trick of wearing your helmet hold your head up like a pillow give it to go you’ll see today I’m feeling uh markedly better than yesterday which um fits in with my classic 4day Theory which is if you’re not really prepared

Your body takes 3 days to quickly adapt and you start to feel a bit Better I’ never really looked at like big picture I was constantly just like all right let me see what I’m going to do today and manage that and then it’s like all right where am I going to get to Tomorrow never thought like oh wow I’m going to be doing this for so

Long if you did that after day one you’d be overwhelmed Well here’s my room situation just trying out everything at a shower off the Beds headwind is Killer I’ve been to a lot of gas stations this trip and this is uh this is one of my favorite ones good we try to keep it clean Yeah I’d heard if you make it through Montana you can do the whole thing there’s hard riding there and it comes very early on so I think if you got ahead of yourself thinking too far down the road you’d be like this is going to be Impossible Now Is Um I woke up last night halfway through a sleep and uh had a pretty upset stomach um was coming out of me like hot snakes luckily uh kept it down but I was a little worried to say the least but anyway slept another few hours and woke up and

Was feeling a bit better so I thought I’d just get out here and see how it felt oh skunk stay back stay back any that’s where I’m at Well I guess this that mud they tell me about very slow going here off the path it’s all this panut butter mud basically [Applause] unridable there uh it’s just all peanut butter mode my plan to get to I it’s lava Mountain Lodge I think I might be there a bit early but then it’s a big old send to uh Pond not give it a crap So we’re going this way so you should be good yeah you should be good um yeah it doesn’t say it’s it says a 10% chance so no you’re good you don’t need to don’t worry about it would have been pretty straightforward except the that little muds set back now but you know

What should be right I get by the time I’d washed my bike and stocked up a bit i’ been there way too long and I was like if it’s wet up there it’s going to be pretty Miserable this is going to be a long push to the you know my Fe slowly started to come to life yeah I’ve still got I think over 120k uh it’s only4 to 7 so we’ll see first storm kind of came through it was just like a bit heavy rain and I was

Like it’s pretty high up here I’d love to get through this section before it’s night and then these waves of storms just started coming through and it would just dump I just kep getting wet and wet the temperature just started dropping The Final Storm rolled over the

Hill and it was the mother of all storms I think holy [ __ ] has been snowing here really yeah fine oh my god did we find that where he is can we find yeah trying to try to load this man it’s heavy out there what does it look like the mod’ be

Better so last moving at 14 km an hour 3 minutes ago that was crazy and where is he um 65k to go it is hour I do think you can actually we can actually drive up the L the road that he’s coming down on um you want me to ride us to there

Yeah just to see take that me yeah my phone’s right here in the pouch you right yeah Jesus Christ thing I’ve ever done there’s lightning just hitting trees like all around me and I couldn’t stop cuz I was too cold what do you want to do just need to get get my [ __ ]

Just keep going you sure Lan Morton l a c h l a m m o r t o n uh okay um can I just give you my now are you there like a treasure I found the treasure yeah I really don’t want to put myself in the situation like that again for

Something that’s completely like not necessary I don’t know was like if I don’t start to heat up soon and I don’t see any houses or anything it’s like I’m going have to test out this this SOS button on the track close Oh he’s Co get wall just trying to put on everything I have now that was Woring I’m just going to to wait here till it stops cuz it’s impossibly cold down there it’s not really looking any better sorry have a good ride thank you is A Sh Yeah we just wanted to cry and just wait there you know I was just like I just need a break here and the the break I caught was there was a creek cuz the mud sets like really quickly managed to get like most of the catastrophic mut out of the important

Places and the bike was rable again and then good push on to warm S Over I’m glad that that very brutal I was uh not prepared mentally for that Two N I got a bage from SC this morning say good luck on your back ride like your back ride watch out for the bear the be go fast to fast bye bye yeah too good too good Crush to death cat where you going [Laughter] today Colorado

They’re going up I swear to God they’re going up on the Wall of Shame for sure I swear before I went to the Basin I had like half of that oh really yeah and then all poop gone and then just that’s prob took all like 10 minutes to go

Here doesn’t want to work right now oh yeah like this is CYS I’m uh leaving Steamboat after pit stop in there new breake pads I needed a new weera and then pulled the cranks out there was just a bunch of stuff after all that mud yesterday so they got me in and

Out very thankful for that I’m pushing on now about 3:30 I’m just going to ride and see where I get and bivy down Something’s just happened and I can hell like a mad man right Now [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] oh All you get just enough uh just enough rest your brain’s working again but body is not not uh on the same level but that’s all right for some yeah like french fries and then chips and salsa or no just french fries oh just french fries got it they get a vanilla absolutely

Hard get going first vanilla milkshake fries are on the way oh yeah man thank you yeah for sure we going it’s been great oh yeah yeah we go through a lot of ice cream man I don’t want to count how many thousand of these I’ve made over the

Years but the answer is a lot of them AIG This it’s feel like sunlind out there it’s so bright and the wind was just right in my eyes I’ve lost three things in the ban of being cold I lost my rain pants I lost uh my cheat she and I lost my sun I wasn’t aware of where I was in terms

Of an overall record cuz I thought realistically I don’t think I can break that record sleeping that much I was still like obviously pushing but I wasn’t aware where I was in comparison with any time Where how far is that 169 plus this just like I was too lazy to switch everything into kilm and the sh and then everything I was like all right I’ll just switch my to Miles and then I haven’t done that so I’m just like spending the whole day being like converting 50

Plus 100 no 20 19 miles pretty stout H yes sir grab it grab it gra it yes sir right on a 12-hour ride before noon it’s a huge climb coming out huge huge it’s still like ring fun oh no not particularly no thank yeah I get the challenge doing it this way I think to really enjoy it you need need

Like 8 hours I should have made 8 Hours uh D so and it’s electronic so there nothing I can do about it try oh go my derailer is completely died try everything I can do to uh fix it but W respond anything so now single speding in a huge gear trying to get to Cuba You Uh unless you have a nice ex the rail a lot Of This is the big problem I’m going to go fix it in a hotel room I hope I just really don’t want a single speed all the way to Mexico what don’t Know thanks for coming to say good day mate appreciate that yeah good luck man thank you flash is red like quick succession it made like a noise too it’s just gone fully Rogue like there’s no I dried all three Batteries I really don’t want To H Need to R the 400 It’s not a deal I mean that’s the easiest stretch I’m going to have on it so it’s going to be worse ni to like Jimmy a spoke in there so it would like get up into a dcq so I could actually not just spin but then a minut any Hill was like PR

Taxing um but nothing I can do about it is nothing to Super City like 400 go from here to there got no idea how long it’s going to take on this [Applause] bike [Applause] So almost to Pie Town uh deraa still not working but uh making do definitely stings a bit on these Hills but uh you know not many options to deal with that so uh just make do and uh yeah keep trucking here you go uh their sauce this is got pineapple

No that is pineapple this is chili and that’s veg is he making Lance speed records or something or I ask well it sounds like you’re just moving through where you heading the Night Vincent V Vincent is that what you’re trying to get to or you just ride all night uh I’m

Just going to go till I don’t know what STS I mean I’m just going to yeah sure [Laughter] enough all right well you got to do what you got to do right I lived here 30 years two of them my kids three of them were born around

Here two in this room no one lives here now just hikers and bikers that come through so when they put the Divide Trail in officially you know it has like the divides the center line it’s supposed to be within I think 30 or 40 mil of whatever if it could be on the

Divide great so New Mexico is probably not as uh organized as the other states North there was more Trails established so it kind of varies and then there’s easement problems and and the actual divide here goes it will it goes over alros and then over Mangus mountain and eventually it

Goes over to Black Range but most people that walk or bike they never go that way you know so it’s there’s a lot of play okay there you guys know about that race they do here once a year it starts in I think BFF and you got to get down

Antalope Wells within a certain amount of days and it’s all self- sustaining mhm and we’ve got those those guys are funny cuz when they’re going through nobody’s stopping unless they know they aren’t going to make it into the book and then it’s like what the you know excuse the

French filing so if I pull it all the way out it shifts down to and then if I if I put the the nipple through it gives me one extra like that and then my medium gear is just that you got to stop the do

It I feel like I’m going to need some more gears Soon A so I’m not going to lie it’s been a very difficult last 24 36 hours having uh dealt with uh a fair bit early on in the route I kind of felt like uh most of uh troubles were behind me and then in this uh derailer broke it was kind of

Like St that broke the camels back bit I just wanted to stop my knees want to pop out of the skin and I feet are raw they’re not pretty stink disgusting I’m still gone anytime you get to put yourself past something he thought he couldn’t yeah that’s that’s the Gift I was quite emotional earlier in the day getting to Silver City there was a p before that where I was just like I think I’m going to do this there was a part of you that didn’t really believe you could but you just like try and not never listen to

That but it was there all the time and when you finally have the realization you’re going to make it it’s like it’s quite emotional On Rer in the [Applause] world There’s key moments when I really thought I was going to quit there were situations where I was like extremely cold extremely scared and managed those moments like to come through them that was more satisfying than just purely the Speed Oh [ __ ] w a big few Weeks it’s nice to not be um rushing when like thinking about something like I got to do to like get to the next thing to the next thing because to to fit in like the sleep as well as all the writing and then hitting all the right

Res resupplies and then you have to kind of ride pretty fast to make it all work it’s just like a constant Focus do you know how long it took you uh no not exactly do you want to know cuz it’s Sunday what’s the time now exactly the 9 we started at 9: on

Uh Tuesday uh till it’s a half day 12 and 1 half days been a lot faster if I wasn’t single Spring I want to close my eyes and forget my S I don’t care if the devil takes tomorrow ashes to ashes if I must I want to leave all my troubles dust to dust trouble in school y trouble in the park trouble in the Courthouse trouble in my heart still wet

Trouble on the corner just a little little way trouble trouble trouble on my night I want to sleep under the stars and fade away let the wind take my memories down the I want to help me dance away the heartache in the Moonlight trouble in the school yard trouble in the park trouble in Courthouse trouble in my heart trouble on the corner trouble on the line I fight the Dr trouble trouble trouble on my Mind Even Trouble in the school yard trouble in the park trouble in the cour house trouble in my heart Sun day trouble in day break trouble in the night trouble trouble trouble on my my my