Originally Posted by
climbhigher
Thank you everyone for the feedback - it is very helpful. It sounds like the American Discovery Trail is a better option that I didn't know about. Has anyone biked that? I see where it says a number of sections are either too difficult for a bike or are closed to bikes (wilderness areas and such). Do these areas impact the ride much or add much distance to the already almost 5,000 mile trip?
Jim
There are ways around the wilderness areas. Most of them wouldn't add too much to the trip since the wilderness areas aren't really all that big. I would point out that the Discovery trail uses paved roads in many areas. Their route through eastern Colorado...both north and south...use paved road ways. However, when the route hits the mountains of Colorado, it gets mean. Looking at the route information on the ADT on-line, much of the Colorado mountain route would
require a mountain bike and would be rather gnarly riding without a touring load. There are better routes to use but even those are probably going to be much better on a mountain bike than a touring bike. Most all of the routes that use a dirt road to get over our high mountains aren't all that smooth.