Earlier this summer, David Lamb joined Ryan Van Duzer and a group of 25 other riders for a 500-mile journey down the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route between Colorado and New Mexico. His latest video shares an inside look at the one-of-a-kind experience. Watch it here…

Words, photos, and video by David Lamb

Back in July, I rode section five of the Great Divide as part of an event put on by Priority Bicycles and Ryan Van Duzer. Twenty-five other riders and I met him in Salida, Colorado, and rode all the way to Grants, New Mexico, together. We completed the route over eight days and about 550 miles. Sharing this experience with 25 other people was really cool. The shared suffering was a bonding experience, and by the end, we felt like one big family.

It also made the difficult parts of the route a lot more fun. When you’re exhausted, climbing for hours, or dealing with bad weather, there’s usually someone else right there going through the exact same thing. When everyone is suffering together, you end up laughing about it. There are pros and cons to riding solo and riding with a group. I don’t think this experience turned me off to solo adventures. There is a special sense of accomplishment you feel when you get to the end of a long solo adventure. But ultimately, what I enjoyed most about this trip was being surrounded by people who love bikepacking as much as I do.

Completing this trip with this group is a memory I will cherish forever, and I hope the photos and my 25-minute video capture a few of the best moments. You can watch it above.

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