Riding 1,800 km on the Great Divide – Our Bikepacking Adventure Across America !

Hi everyone, we are just leaving Canmore now. We stay just a few days to rest and to check the bike before starting. It's a great divide. So today is the first day on the divide. Let's go! And we start the day by a huge climb. You can see it on my left. This morning we just climbed a huge hill but now it's okay. We are almost at the summit I think. Yeah still seven meters to climb and we are so glad because it's time to go to the great divide. After three days in Canmore, we finally hit the road again. We start the legendary Great Divide mountain bike route. The trails were all over the place. Narrow single tracks, gravel roads, dusty paths, and that covered us from head to toes. We are right at the beginning of one of my biggest dreams as a mountain biker doing the Great Divide. So I'm very happy. And look at that trail! We are at the Kaneski lake and the day is finished. We are in a campground, the Kaneski campground, the first campground we saw on the Great Divide and we have done today 70 kilometers with 1000 meters of elevation gain. So now it's time to prepare the dinner and to eat. And for the dinner of tonight it's some pasta with pesto. How was the day? It was a good day, the first day in the Great Divide. It was cool, very different. This is not the highway now, it's a little cycle path so it's good. Mornings were calm and quiet, deer casually passing by the road. But then we had an incredible encounter. A bear appeared on the trail, no time to film. A forest ranger came racing up in his pickup to get between us and the bear. Our filming plans cancelled but honestly, probably for the best, bears are dangerous. Thank you. We are just at the beginning of the climb of the Elk Pass. The gravel road is not so bad, it's not very easy We are at the Blue Lake Rec Site and we are going to take a wonderful shower after a dusty day It's good. Had to stay a bit clean, we are not total savage. Eventually we made it to Fernie, a small peaceful town. Finally some rest. We just arrived in on the side on the road, just in a little diner or little restaurant. We sell some burgers, poutine. Yeah, our last poutine in Canada because we are crossing the border in 37 kilometers. So we just stay before the border this night, 15 kilometers so we've got just 20 kilometers to do more today. And I'm eating my last wonderful poutine of the our breakfast and this morning we will cross the border of the United States of America for the second time of the trip. And that's the big problem we have because we have a visa with the ESTA system. We have 19 days in the US and we spend around eight days in Alaska but the issue is that this 19 days doesn't start again. So when we leave Alaska and we when we re-enter in the US after one month and a half of Canada, we are still in this 19 days. So if we cross the border now and then don't restart the 19 days, we just have one month and 10 days in the US. We saw that we can ask to the custom officer to get three months again so we will see. We hope we can have our three months so we can see all National Park, La Cité National Park, Yellowstone, Grand Teton, going around San Francisco to see the giant sequoia. We'll see. Crossing the border was smooth. We got a three-month visa, plenty of time to explore the Uncle Sam's country. And welcome to the United States for the next three months. They were just wonderful at the border and they give us three months again. And now we are in the state of Montana and the landscape changed a lot. We kept following the great divide through Montana's forest mountain, wildlife everywhere. Today is just the beginning of the Montana and we just enter in a national forest. I don't know the name of this one. It's climbing but it's so beautiful. It's perfect. That's a good beginning for the US and the Montana state. What are you doing Moraine? We need to clean the chain. Yeah because it's a little bit dirty now. Because with the rain and the dust it's important. I add some oil on the chains. Montana's trails, incredible. Small roads, steep gravel tracks, nothing we couldn't handle. And now we are at the top of the first climb of the day. 400 meters of elevation gain during 10 kilometers. So it passed perfect. And of course after every tough climb there's always an awesome descent before the next climb of course. Today we have 45 kilometers to do to the city of Whitefish. In Whitefish we left our bikes with the Warm Showers family before heading to Glacier National Park and it's time to visit this wonderful park. Two days, 40 kilometers, over 2500 meters of climbing. Trails stunning, the view incredible, touring peaks, massive glacier, deep valley. We spot mountain goat on the cliff, marmot hiding in the rock, deer in the forest, and curious chickens and squirrels. We camp up under a starry sky, only sound our thoughts breaking the silence. To stay light we had only dehydrated food cooked on our little Fercile stove. It unfolds in seconds and gives a strong fire even in the wind. We are half of the way to go to the Sperry Glacier. It's just behind the pass, behind me. Just two kilometers to do to the observation point. Glacier National Park created in 1910 to protect wildlife and landscapes from logging and hunting really showed us how precious these lands are. Every step made us feel it. After a well-deserved break we head south through Montana. Gravel trails, rocky path, sometime in the rain. We are almost on the summit of the big mountain before the Llama Ranch but we are not exactly on the summit and we climb. It's very steep and lots of rocks but it's okay. We know now why it's called the mountain bike route. Yeah exactly. We met Jeff a cyclist from Oregon and rode with him for a day. We are on a rocky path where we need to push because the ground is too low. Also with our friend with a small bike it's hard with a light bike. On day 54 we arrived at Barbara and John's Llama Ranch. Magical. Animals everywhere. Llamas, ducks, horses. Small wooden cabins, hot showers. Each cabin had a kitchen. In front of the house the magic fridge. Always stocked with drinks and sandwiches. The only rule, do a good deed somewhere in the world. We spent time chatting with other travelers enjoying the peaceful valley surrounded by pine forests and mountains. We left rest full of energy, deeply grateful. And this morning we are just leaving the Llama Ranch after two wonderful day of rest and today we are heading to Helena. Then a big problem. While descending a long gravel trail my rear rack completely broke, sagging badly. We had to limp our way to Helena. Jones our warm shower host welcomed us with open arms. Amazing kind hearted person. We stay a few days while a local welder reinforce and repair our rack. In the meantime we help Jones in the garden. The price of warm showers. When the repair was done we were back on the road here in perfect shape. Hey this evening we cook a little meal with some onion, noodles, peanut butter, soy sauce and some spice. I think it will be very good. And everything is ready. It's time to eat. This night it was a little bit cold. We wake up around a minus two but we have a wonderful sun. The sky is blue. So let's take our breakfast and pack everything and let's go back on the road. A few days later we reach Yellowstone's west entrance. After lots of kilometers on the highway and lots of headwinds we are in Yellowstone National Park, the famous national park of Wyoming and now we go to visit this park. The park is alive. The ground steaming, rumbling, bubbling beneath our wheels. We rode through one of the largest active volcanic craters in the world. Bison slowly grazing in golden meadows like ancient guardians of this land. Geysers erupt without warning, shooting boiling water into the sky, filling the air with sulfur. The color around them incredible. From organisms adapted to the varying temperature. Yellowstone is the world's first national park created in 1872. Protects wildlife, rivers and forests. Every petal stroke connects us to its history and the beauty of the nature. Next, Grand Teton, Wyoming. Sharp peaks, massive glaciers, rivers winding through valleys. The valley below, tiny. We felt even smaller. Air smelled like pine. Snow on some ridges, deers and squirrels moving freely. Proud to get such a perspective on an untamed mountain range. Grand Teton, created in 1929 to protect wildlife and mountains, shows how fragile and powerful nature is. On a bike, every detail is noticeable. At 20 kilometers per hour, it takes a while to cross these giants. After a few days in Jackson Hole, a town just past Grand Teton, we kept following the great divide. Winter was coming. Cold morning, frost on the tents, low sun making landscape even more beautiful. A few hundred kilometers later, we reach Atlantic City. Dry, cold, windy, roads almost desert. Silence replaced by coarse wind of 50 kilometers per hour. A wise man once said, the wind is always there and it's usually in your face. The few water sources on our GPS at the dry up slow us down, force us to hitchhike a ride to Craig's, Colorado. So after two or three hitchhikes, now we are in a little city. So we are in Craig, just next to Steamboat Spring, our final destination before the west coast. And it's time to visit a little museum. And Brian Fogart says that's our third state in the US. After Montana, Wyoming, we are now in Colorado. Let's go to visit the museum. Craig's has a small museum about gunfight and the wild west. Old rifles, leather saddles with ornate details. It showed how dangerous life was back then and how courage and survival shaped this small town. From there, we rode to Steamboat Springs, looking for warmth, rest and food before the next lake. We are just at the top of a hill above Craig's City, where we stay in a church for the night. And tomorrow, we are going to ride to Steamboat Springs. Good night. This morning, we just left Steamboat Springs. We stay two days there to change the tent in a big NES factory. We also check the bicycle. The front hub has also some trouble, but now it's fixed. And today, we start our last part on the Divide, under a wonderful rain. This is why we are under this big shelter to wait for the rain to pass, because we don't like rain. So as I said Sébastien, this is the last part of the Great Divide and we go to Fraser to take the train to San Francisco. Three days toward Fraser Winter Park Station. Rain almost non-stop. Trails muddy, slippery. We were soaked. We are just at the train station. We are waiting for the train for San Francisco. We'll see how they are going to take the bicycle, because we don't know if we need to remove everything from the bike or not. After Fraser Winter Park Station, we took the train to San Francisco. The city was alive. Bike on the street, people everywhere. Big change after weeks in the middle of nowhere. And honestly, in France, middle of nowhere, it's at most 20 kilometers from a good baguette. Here, more like 150 kilometers from a gas station. We explored road at night in groups and finally saw the Pacific Ocean. After weeks of mountains, national parks, wildlife and flora, sometimes a bit of concrete feels pretty good. Every pedal stroke, every climb, every act of kindness had let us here. And we already knew this was just the beginning. We are now in San Francisco on the Pacific Coast, just in front of the sea. And for the next video, we are going to follow the coast. My helmet just dropped from the bike. So for the next video, we are going to follow the coast from San Francisco to Los Angeles and after the border between the US and Mexico. So thank you for watching. See you next time. Bye-bye.