Welcome to a collection of blog posts, below, about my seven-month Alaska to Mexico by bicycle trip, back in 2009. For more on this life-changing ride, make sure you also check out the interactive route maps, photos and videos too.
This was by far the biggest trip I had ever undertaken. I started on the northern Arctic Ocean coast of Alaska, USA where the pack-ice was still frozen at the end of May – I was that far north! Somehow, with a bike weighing 250 lbs, wild-camping in temperatures below -20°C, being buried under snow one night, and carrying two-weeks of food, I then rode, solo and unsupported, 450 miles across empty tundra and mountains, on the dirt roads of The Dalton, and with services only after 250 miles, coming face to face with bears and dodging the occasional gigantic truck bringing supplies to the oil and gas rigs in the Arctic Ocean.
Bizarrely, that didn’t put me off, so I continued south, riding the remote Alaskan Highway (where it’s possible to walk for a hundred days off into wilderness), the 3,000-mile-length of the Rocky Mountains, to finish the ride in northern-central Mexico in 45°C heat. The planning was huge, not least because I would quit my job, rent out my place and spend time getting the right gear. On the ride, I saw astonishing landscapes, 20,000-ft peaks, forests stretching for thousands of miles, basked for days on end in some of the wildest regions that this planet has left, met some wonderful, kind people (and of course, those bears!) and realised I had resilience that I didn’t think I had. To say it was quite the trip would be an understatement! Enjoy 🙂
