My route for biking the Western USA 🇺🇸

Here's the goal for the summer — two wheels, 3,000 miles and 267,700 feet of climbing from Salida, Colorado to Santa Monica, California. I plan to do about 50 days of riding with a target average mileage of 60 miles a day, a good rule of thumb for a loaded touring bike and plenty of downtime.

The route passes through six states: Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, Oregon and California

I'll be riding the western third of the Adventure Cycling Association's TransAmerica Trail, a route created for the 1976 bicentennial going from Virginia to Oregon using low-traffic roads, along which bike-friendly services have sprung up in subsequent decades. It's the most popular route for going from coast to coast, and one I had intended to do in its entirety until I took a closer look at trip reports from the Midwest section! (Heat, headwinds, scenery so repetitive it can drive people insane — maybe another time 😇) 

Instead of starting in Virginia I'll pick up the Trail just north of Cañon City, Colorado, a couple hours' drive from Denver down the Front Range of the Rockies. The disadvantage of this start point is the difficulty of the beginning — I plan to cross Hoosier Pass on the third day of riding, the highest point on the entire trip at 11,542 feet and part of the Continental Divide between the Pacific and Atlantic. Normally, westbound riders will have been on the road for thousands of miles and have their body and mind ready for the Rockies. I will not.

 

The climbing (ft) in the first few days

 

However, because the infrastructure out West is pretty modern, the grades of the roads are lower than those in the Appalachian Mountains (which is what westbound riders have at the start of their trip) and especially gentler compared to what I dealt with in the Alps, so my main concern is the elevation and not the intensity of the climbing. I'll have about a week between landing in Denver (5,300ft) and facing Hoosier, which should be enough time to acclimatize to the altitude.

Another potential issue is my start date — right at the beginning of June is decidedly spring in the Rockies, but there's always a risk of snow. I'm keeping things very safe, so I have camping gear that will take me below freezing without issue, but a snowstorm could stop me in my tracks. Luckily, though, the Colorado Rockies aren't that remote and I'll always have options to head indoors if the weather becomes impassible.

I haven't been too concerned with what's after Hoosier Pass — it's not worth planning an itinerary more than a few days at a time — but my understanding is that the rest of the Rockies won't be as challenging from a riding perspective because the Trail slowly descends, and the following weeks in Wyoming will see the lack of services as my biggest concern. (Did you know: the most populous city and capital of Wyoming, Cheyenne, has a population of 65,000 people, while the London borough of Barnet has 389,000!) Once I get to the coast, services and civilization become a lot more plentiful, to the point where the Pacific Coast is recommended as a good training ground for cycle touring — easy mode after the previous couple thousand miles.

I've also been learning about the wildlife I'll be (hopefully not) confronting on my trip — black and grizzly bears, mountain lions, moose, coyotes... I'd love to see them all, but only from a safe distance! Not super excited about the idea of having curious black bears looking for food in the campsites 😵

I'm planning on posting about every week when I'm on the road, so keep a lookout on the site from June onwards. You can also sign up to receive email notifications for new posts using the form in the site’s sidebar (go to the home page and click the three bars on the upper left hand corner).