“The great thing about a map: it gets you in and out of places in a lot of different ways.”   ~MacGyver

 Adventure Cycling Great Divide Mountain Bike Route Maps 

The maps for the route, produced by the non profit Adventure Cycling Association are excellent!  Once you figure out the logic behind them and accept minor imperfections, the maps will become one of the best tools for enjoying the route.  Being a navigation and map junkie, I tend to be kind of hard on maps.  A few things to take into account with the maps:

-          Make sure you have the most recent version.  The maps have a stock number right under the title.  For example, 2006 version Section 3’s number is BC# 203-06L.  The last three digits, in this case “06L” designate the year’s version number, these are the 2006 series.  I have seen an indication of 07 versions appearing out there, especially for Section #4.  When you order (I ordered online and got the most recent ones) make sure they are the latest version.  I met up with some other riders that had the older versions and they had never heard of this bypass, or that alternate route, etc. 

-          Make sure to check online addenda for changes. 1.)  ACA prints the maps.  2.) Somebody goes out and rides the route and reports major discrepancies OR changes occur organically, like services phone numbers changing, etc.  3.) ACA publishes the changed data for free as online addenda until the newer series of maps can be printed.  I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t check the addenda as thoroughly as I should have and regret it.

-          Take the elevation profiles at face value.  You cannot really appreciate the elevation profiles on the maps until you are actually out on the route.  They are an excellent tool for planning and pacing your daily rides.  That being said, they aren’t completely perfect. I was very frustrated at times with the profiles.   I thought before I started this trip and collected my own super detailed GPS data, that with the technology out there, easily readable elevation profiles shouldn’t be that hard to come up with.  I was wrong.  I tried to duplicate what ACA had done and never was able begin to get it off the ground.  I used one of the best GPS’s on the market to record my data and still don’t completely trust it…something about the way these things collect and process data isn’t quite there yet.  I think ACA struggled with the same issues a few years ago while developing the profiles for this route and decided to go with the best solution based on the data they had.  Although I was frustrated out there, I give them a lot of credit, what they did is far better than anything I could have come up with.  Part of my frustration was that, with my background, I was used to interpreting elevation based on topographical contours.  The ACA maps have to be printed at such a scale that accurate topography would busy the map up too much and wash out the details you really need.  They made the right decision by doing it this way.

-          Don’t bet the farm on services indicated on the maps, especially in small towns.  Fortunately, I grew up in small, rural town environment very similar to 90% of the small towns on this route.  I wasn’t at all surprised when I rolled into some places to find out that the only greasy spoon in town was closed because Uncle Seymour was having heart surgery.  I knew that one could easily roll into a town on a Sunday and find very little open…that’s just how it is.  As far as campsites and water go, for whatever reason, the USFS closes down a good number of the established campsites on the route after Labor Day, so any campsite is suspect after that.  None of the USFS campsites in New Mexico I passed through had any water available.  Take into account ‘seasons’ as well.  The vast majority of the communities on the route are supported by tourism or hunting.  The optimum window of riding the GDMBR is between Mid July and October, which is bisected by Labor Day.  Labor Day is generally the end of the summer tourism season and although bow hunting season starts right around Labor Day, the big rifle hunting season isn’t until mid-October.  Consequently, a lot of these small town business owners take advantage of the lull in seasons to duck out for awhile.   If you ride the route during the times I did (late July-late September,) you will see this ‘service exodus’ in Central Colorado all the way into New Mexico.  The more remote a service was, the less I would get my hopes up about it.  ACA cannot fairly address this in the aggregate because it’s all so unpredictable.  

-          You are going to disagree with the map from time to time.  Several times I looked at the map, mostly the narratives, and was like, “What?”  Sometimes it was an oversight on the part of the mapmakers, sometimes it was a change that nobody had reported, and sometimes is was a disagreement on how I interpreted the terrain versus how the mapmaker interpreted the terrain.  As opposed to flaming the mapmakers in my route narratives, I chose to take the hard right over the easy wrong and go through a detailed review of each map and report any discrepancies I may found directly to Adventure Cycling.  So far, I found Adventure Cycling very receptive to my comments.