Solo Continental Divide: The Hard Way

This looks like a great ride. I’m looking forward to your RR. I echo @liv2day and appreciate for your filming and editing. Based on the trailer, we’ll be seeing some great footage.

I second that.

It's gonna be a little bit before I'm able to get the first video from this trip out. I broke the footage down into sections (NM, CO, WY, and MT) and I have nearly 40 hours of footage just from NM (2.7TB of footage for the whole trip). I expect I'll do one video for each section and each video will be about 30 minutes so it will be unlikely I'll be able to do more than one video a month. I'm finishing up my last video from my COBDR trip and then it will be onto the CDT footage. Thanks for all of the interest and I look forward to showing you the adventure.

In

Don't stress out about the videos, just post more pics.

I’m really interested in doing this similar trip sooner than later. I’d love to know more about your production setup & workflow while traveling. How did you manage the files on the road? Did you bring a laptop + SSD to transfer footage off the cards or use something else? How was it keeping everything charged? Would you change anything (gear or workflow) now that it’s done? I’m really interested, clearly this isn’t a fly by seat of your pants filming trip, some real effort and planning went in to this.

Find awesome camera angle, setup camera, ride back down the road, wait for dust to settle, ride past camera looking cool while trying not to crash on camera, stop & turn around, pick up camera, check footage & focus, pack camera, — repeat 100 times per day.

More pictures it is, these are just ones from NM. I'll post ones from CO once I get closer to getting that video done.

As far as workflow for the footage I provided an explanation of how I was doing that for my AZBDR trip at about the 1:00 mark.



It basically didn't change for the COBDR or this trip, I just brought an additional hard drive to have enough storage. Charging everything off the bike wasn't particularly difficult. I have a Neutrino power distribution module so I'm able to control all the USB ports I have plugged into it. Basically I have charging cables run into my tank bag and to a powerpack on my tailbag and the bike charges everything throughout the day. If I stop somewhere with plug in power I'm able to plug in the power pack and then run cables off of it to charge the smaller things. The drone was the only difficult thing to keep charged because you have to have 12V power, I had three batteries for it so I always had one charging in my tank bag so I typically always had two fully charged batteries and one in the process of topping off. Hope that makes sense.

As far as the cameras, I had a GoPro 7 on a selfie stick/mini tripod which I used for all the 'testimonial' type stuff, it works well for any flyby shots and stuff like that. Though on this trip to be honest I didn't set it down as much as I could/should have. A lot of it was I hate turning around and riding the same path multiple times, as well as being in quite a few areas where I couldn't turn around and make multiple passes. Having the rear facing camera on the bike kind of takes the place of that sort of shot as you're able to see the rider and what is around them, it provides a wonderful perspective for seeing what the rider is dealing with.

In

I'm in.

The first video is up on youtube and the following videos will post every week afterwards. I'm looking at 2 videos per state (except Idaho since I bounce back and forth between ID and MT) so 8 videos total. I'll be including the GPX files for each state as I get through them. Below are the New Mexico route files. The files below do not necessarily represent the exact route I traveled as afterwards I went back and found better workarounds for any locked gates, wrong turns, or issues I might have had while on the ride.

Please remember if you follow this route to be a good steward of the backcountry, close all gates behind you, don't harass wildlife or livestock, and pack out any trash. Above all have fun and feel free to reach out to me with route updates, issues, and experiences!

I was fortunate to cross paths with @Mountainman13, and have been looking forward to this! I’m working on my CDR RR, too, but I don’t think even my 2-up Montana single track is gonna touch this!

It was a pleasure to meet you as well and I'm glad your ride went well! I look forward to reading your ride report when you get around to it.

In!

That tablet GPS setup is awesome! Where can I get more info on it?

Samsung Galaxy Active Tab 2 in a ram mount running Drive Mode Dashboard and their controller. They have an extensive thread in Maps and Navigation. It is the best motorcycle app I've ever found and the developer is a member here.

New Mexico Part Two:



From Pie Town I continued north through the El Malpis Conservation Area and skirt the edge of the Chain of Craters Wilderness Area, amazing terrain and stunningly beautiful but about as remote as you can get. I was alone the entire 100+ miles from Pie Town until I arrived at Continental Divide, NM. After that it was time to get across the reservations and into Cuba before nightfall. Due to COVID I didn't want to try and find a spot to camp anywhere near the reservations, they have enough problems as it is. In normal times it would not have been nearly as important to get to Cuba for the night. The beauty of the area near the reservations quite literally took my breath away multiple times. I saw several groups of wild horses but none close enough to get pictures or video.

Between Cuba, NM and the border with Colorado was some of the most difficult terrain experienced in New Mexico. Lots of rocky sections, washed out trails/roads, and sand pits which were not apparent until you were in them. The approach into Abiquiu was one of the most taxing sections as you ride down a dry streambed for approximately 10 miles. Rock ledges with sand in the flat parts made it exhausting, unable to go fast enough to navigate the sand easily, but so rocky you risked a large drop or rough hit if you sped up.

Ended up dealing with some navigational issues near Chalma, several locked gates and difficulty with finding trails which went through to my destination resulted in having to hardball it between Chalma and Colorado. Afterwards I was able to find a series of trails and roads which follow the divide, but at the time trying to find a path on the tablet just didn't work.

At least arriving in Colorado meant I was out of the heat.

Great footage! I was thinking about doing the CDT, but definitely not your version at age 66 with a 990.

Yeah I wouldn't suggest it, mostly because of the weight of the 990. Not because you wouldn't be able to do it at 66. PM me if you want suggestions of how to make an easier version of my route, I can point out the sections to avoid and some possible workarounds on the GPX files. I ran into several people following GPS Kevin's GDR route and none of them seemed super thrilled by it.