Anna Taylor is no stranger to demanding routes. But a recent bike tour around Tasmania pushed her in ways she wasn’t expecting, the adventurer says.
“The start of the trip was brutally hard” Taylor wrote in an Instagram post summarizing her trip. “We set off jet-lagged, in the middle of a heat wave, and quickly began to suffer as we realized just how heavy all of our kit had made the bikes, and how ‘roads’ in Tasmania can, at times, prove not to be quite what you expect…Progress was slow, and so was everything else, as we were still getting used to bike life in a foreign country.”
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36,000m of vertical
A trad climber by training, Taylor initially set out with partner Mat Wright for a combination bike tour/climbing trip similar to the route she strung together in the UK in 2021. The mission was to bike to, and then climb, all of Tasmania’s “Abels” — 1,100m peaks with 150m of prominence on all sides.
But heavy gear (they brought along camera equipment to record the adventure), challenging weather, and mechanical issues forced the pair to change their plans.
Taylor and Wright quickly pivoted to a classic bike tour, departing from Hobart and logging 3,000km and 36,000m of vert on their loop around Tas.
As they navigated steep jungles, mischievous wildlife, and sticky heat, their biking fitness increased. Extra strength meant extra time to explore local climbing in a low-pressure situation and a more complete Tasmanian experience.
“Having to switch goals quite quickly into the trip was hard to do at the time, but it paid off in every possible way. The objective we completed, in the end, allowed us to cover more miles, and see way more of Tassie than we would originally have done, and the planning I’d already completed actually proved to be extremely useful, as without it, I wouldn’t have had a clue about the layout of the island,” Taylor told ExplorersWeb.
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Although the adventure didn’t hew to the original goal, Taylor and Wright seemed to enjoy themselves. They certainly found plenty of struggle and limit-pushing challenges along the way. It’s a good reminder that adventuring involves more than just checking boxes.
“I’d still like to come back one day and try my original idea though,” Taylor shared. “With the knowledge I now have, I feel as if I have a reasonable idea of how you would need to approach that.”
