Adventure Cycling's Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Kicks Off Tenth Anniversary

World's longest mountain bike route showcased with bike tours, guidebook, races, and magazine feature

Missoula, Mont. — The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route (GDMBR) celebrates its 10-year anniversary in 2008 with an epic guided ride, an updated guidebook, two monster races, and a special issue of Adventure Cyclist magazine. The longest mountain bike route on the planet, the GDMBR traces the spine of the Rocky Mountains for a whopping 2,711 miles in its entirety, following primarily dirt roads and tracks from Banff, Alberta, to Antelope Wells, New Mexico, at the Mexican border.

In honor of the GDMBR's 10th Anniversary, Adventure Cycling offers its first-ever guided ride of the entire Great Divide route (June 15 to September 5) including the Banff-to-Montana Canadian extension. This tour promises to be an 82–day dream ride through some of North America's wildest and most spectacular landscapes. Bite-sized tours are also available on scenic stretches of the route in Colorado and Canada.

Rider's looking to experience the route on their own should check out the freshly updated version of Cycling the Great Divide, a comprehensive guidebook to the GDMBR written by Adventure Cycling's Michael "Mac" McCoy. Adventure Cycling also offers map sections for the route featuring turn-by-turn directions, campground locations, and the best re-supply points along the way.

For superhumanly fit cyclists looking to get in on the GDMBR's 10th Anniversary action, there are two ultimate racing challenges taking place on the route this summer. The fifth-annual Great Divide Race kicks off on June 20, following the GDMBR from the Canadian to Mexican borders. (Last year's winner, Jay Petervary, completed the route in a jaw-dropping 15 days.) The Tour Divide is new this year and its website encourages riders to "celebrate the 10th anniversary of the GDMBR." Like the Great Divide Race, the Tour Divide is entirely self-supported, with riders carrying everything they need on their bikes or backs, but it ups the ante by starting a week earlier, on June 13, in Banff and includes the GDMBR's Canadian section for an additional 221 miles of riding. Adventure Cycling is not officially involved in either race but encourages all riders of the route.

To cap off the anniversary events, Adventure Cyclist's July 2008 issue will be devoted to inspiring stories from and practical advice for the route. Essays by Mac McCoy, the GDMBR's principal architect, and other luminaries will look back at the route's first decade, while Adventure Cyclist Deputy Editor Aaron Teasdale gives his account of riding the Canadian section and presents a special section, "Gear for the Great Divide."

For more information on the GDMBR, story ideas, or high-resolution digital images, contact Aaron Teasdale at 800-755-2453 x237 or ateasdale@adventurecycling.org.

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Adventure Cycling Association is the premier bicycle travel organization in North America with more than 43,000 members. A nonprofit organization, our mission is to inspire people of all ages to travel by bicycle. We produce routes and maps for cycling in North America, organize more than 40 tours annually, and publish the best bicycle travel information anywhere, including Adventure Cyclist magazine and The Cyclists' Yellow Pages. With 37,210 meticulously mapped miles in our route network, Adventure Cycling gives cyclists the tools and confidence to create their own bike travel adventures. Contact us at (800) 755-BIKE (2453), info@adventurecycling.org, or visit www.adventurecycling.org.