On this third day of cycling we're up before the morning sun shows itself. We had still yet to find the rhythm of setting up and breaking down everything every single day. The night is cold in the desert, but awaiting us ahead was the sparkling allure of Silver City. Eager to get out of this hostile, beautiful environment we packed our stuff up and off we went; another day of struggle through one of the driest years in the recorded history of New Mexico.
The gravel road had turned into a mixture of loose stones and sand, later becoming just a single sandy line, bending its way around bushes and boulders. In the end we had to push our heavily laden bikes on through this tough and sometimes frightening section, even starting to sink at one point deep into the earth, right where the road suddenly met a riverbed.
We had found ourselves with no food and no water; Silver City was not far ahead but our energy was slipping away with every stroke and every push. We finally hit a paved road some kilometers west of the city. Billboards from multinational corporations bordering the northern Chihuahuan Desert showed us that comfort and safety were very close and that made us feel better. We had never thought it could be possible. Invading the first gas station we encountered, we reloaded and rested a bit. After all, billboards and high calorie food can make you happy sometimes.
We were eager and pretty nervous to begin this adventurous expedition; we were in it just for the experience, for whatever it would take to cycle the route. With our newly purchased Koga bikes with Rohloff hubs, we stepped out of the plane in El Paso, Texas, USA. Taking a few days first to acclimatize to the heat, we then started off on the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.
The trail is regarded as one of the weightiest off-road tracks in the cycling world and it sounded so much fun when reading about it in books and web pages back home on the sofa. The change of landscapes, the off-road camping, the physical endurance, the lack of people, the consecutive hours of just watching nature pass by. It was all included in this beautiful ride, which follows the continental divide from Banff, Alberta, Canada to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, USA.