The Wild West Route might be newly published to the Bikepacking world, but it’s existed for much longer as the Great Western Trail and as part of the Great Western Loop. I cycled the route in 2018 making it up myself as it did not exist officially. For the first third of the route, I followed the Arizona Trail which is 800 miles of, often painful, single track. The route crosses the Grand Canyon, a wilderness area, requiring the bike to be disassembled and carried 21 miles rim-to-rim of the hardest, most physically, mentally taxing miles of my life. With over 20,000 miles hiking and bikepacking, this says something. But, few things can compare to the 100 awkward pounds of a bicycle haphazardly strapped to ones back. For most, a rim-to-rim hike, or even to the bottom and back, is the hardest physical challenge most will face. People die every year on that hike. I passed numerous people sprawled alongside the trail unable to continue suffering from exhaustion and heat stroke.

The entire route is roughly 3,000 miles through Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, and, for me, Montana where I road an Amtrak “home” from Whitefish.