Colorado couple Jules Stennes and Patch Doyle have cycled 6,124km along the newly opened Golden Gravel Trail. The Adventure Cycling Association created the route this year to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
The trail crosses eight states — Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon — and stretches from Cape Girardeau on the banks of the Mississippi River to the small town of Port Orford on the edge of the Pacific Ocean.
Most of the route, roughly 70%, is unpaved. It is the organization’s longest off-road cycling trail, 1,120km longer than the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route.
The Golden Gravel Trail route. Photo: The Adventure Cycling Association
Keep moving
Stennes and Doyle finished in Cape Girardeau after 73 days, averaging an impressive 80km and around 12 hours of pedaling per day. “About 90% of it is mental,” they told Heartland News. “You might be tired, but you just keep on moving.”
The couple are both experienced long-distance cyclists who have previously finished Montana’s Big Sky Spectaculaire in six days and nine hours in 2022 (a self-supported 1,400km ultra-endurance race), among other bikepacking trips.
Jules Stennes and Patch Doyle during the 2022 Big Sky Spectaculaire. Photo: Bikepacking.com
Likewise, the Adventure Cycling Association suggests riders should be self-supported for the Golden Gravel Trail. Riders are advised to carry two or three days’ worth of food for the route’s most isolated sections, and up to a day’s worth of water. This is particularly important in the more arid sections, such as eastern Oregon. In Colorado, Utah, and Idaho, the trail traverses subranges of the Rockies and crosses the route’s highest point, Cumberland Pass at 3,668 m, in Colorado.
Stennes and Doyle say their journey included thunderstorms, aggressive farm dogs, and “countless hills.”
