BY KAREN BOSSICK

Jackson Long had a clearcut goal: To bike 2,700 miles from Banff, Canada, to the Mexican border as part of the Tour Divide gravel bikepacking race, considered the mother of all bikepacking routes.

But five days in, as he hit Idaho’s Island Park, he was ready to give up. He was sick to his stomach and fatigued from navigating temperatures that had boomeranged from the 20s to 90 degrees in a single day. He was also thirsty and hungry, having been able to find no food in the past 24 hours.

“I couldn’t imagine continuing. Here I was on the Montana-Idaho border, and all I could think of was how I still had to go through Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico.”

Jackson Long awaits the race start.

Somehow, the 30-year-old ski coach and nutritionist did manage to push himself to keep going.

Long, a Nordic ski coach and nutritionist, grew up in the Wood River Valley where he raced with the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation cross-country program during middle and high school. Head Coach Rick Kapala and the SVSEF energized him with a love of the mountains and being outdoors, and he coached SVSEF Nordic teams from 2019 to 2023, even as he challenged himself with endeavors like the 40-mile backcountry Grand Traverse endurance challenge from Crested Butte to Aspen.

“I’ve always been into crazy adventures and in recent years I’ve been pushing myself to do longer and more extreme challenges,” he said. “One day I learned of this crazy bike race from Canada to Mexico without support. I couldn’t get it out of my head so I applied for a bikepacking scholarship from Rebecca’s Rusch Be Good foundation and, after a year of dealing with a thyroid condition, I knew I had to do it.”

Living in snow country, Long didn’t have the luxury of preparing for the ride with long bicycle rides like many in other parts of the country did. So, he rode his bike up and down Highway 75 when he could, and pedaled his stationary bike in the one-room cabin he lived in at Galena Lodge while teaching Nordic skiing.

Jackson Long pitches a tent on the lower slopes of Indiana Pass in Southern Colorado.

He supplemented that with grueling ski mountaineering races. But they lasted only a couple hours, not all day long and into the night as this race across the Continental Divide necessitated.

Still, Long found himself toeing the starting line in mid-June on the outskirts of Banff as a guy yelled “Go!” through his air horn and nearly 400 bicyclists—a quarter of them women—began rolling forward.

Long had scarcely pedaled 50 miles when he encountered a small grizzly bear crossing the road.

“Luckily, it was not interested in us,” he recounted. “It just kind of lumbered off without even paying us any attention.”

Jackson Long was off with the sun after conquering Indiana Pass, the highest point on the Divide Tour.

That first day Long pushed his bike up the steep 2,500-foot two-track stretch of chunky rocks known as the Koko Claims. And he kept a steady pace as he passed a sign pointing “Mexico—This Way.” He was making good time—in the top five.

The second day as he headed into Montana he pedaled 211 miles—more than he had planned to bike—to get ahead of an impending storm. But the storm caught him anyway, pelting him with rain at lower elevations and whipping his face with snow on mountain passes.

He forsook his lightweight tent and sleeping pad that night for a hotel room in Whitefish, Mont., to dry off.

“The temperature was in the 20s, but I felt colder than I’d ever been before. My stomach felt a little off--it was hard to eat. And I went a long stretch during which I’d run out of food.”

Jackson Long enjoys a muffin at Wylde Beet—something he couldn’t count on while biking the remote Continental Divide. PHOTO: Karen Bossick

The rain and snow continued the third day and there was no place to get food by the time he got to Ovando, Mont., a town of 50 people and 100 dogs in the Blackfoot River Valley. Nothing was open in Island Park, Idaho, either, when he got there the next morning.

“I had zero energy, my stomach was in shambles, I was having a hard time getting a full breath, and my legs and face were swelling,” he said. “At that point, I was only 200 miles from Sun Valley. So, with 2,000 miles still to ride, it was easy to think: Why not go home and be done with this!?”

After a night’s rest, the 30-year-old decided to push on, and he was rewarded with blue skis and sunshine by the time he reached the Idaho-Wyoming border.

“I realized while I was at Island Park that the way I was approaching the race was not working for me. Instead of enjoying the views, I’d been focused on the computer screen mounted on my handlebars, counting down the miles,” he said.

Long biked through a hundred miles of “barren nothingness” in Wyoming’s Great Basin where wild horses provided the only distraction. He scavenged for Snickers bars and frozen burritos at gas stations, struggling to get enough calories.

Occasionally, he scored real food—rice, potatoes and beans. And he bulked up on pancakes whenever he found a diner.

By the time he neared northwestern Colorado’s Brush Mountain Lodge, which offers cyclists bunk beds and hot showers, the temperature had climbed past 100 degrees. But Long took satisfaction knowing he had reached the halfway point.

Next up: 11,910-foot Indiana Pass, the highest point on the Tour Divide, which boasts about 200,000 feet of elevation gain all told.

“By now, my body had adjusted to the rigors of biking hundreds of miles. I started catching people, moving ahead of the pace I’d set for myself,” he said. “My friends were following me via a GPS tracker that all the riders carry, texting and calling support. And I was enjoying the camaraderie of riders from places like Belgium and Australia—just like me, they were into exploring and seeing what they were capable of.”

Long had just crossed into the Carson National Forest in northern New Mexico when lightning zig-zagged across the darkened skies and the downpour turned the dirt on the trail into gummy clay the consistency of peanut butter. His tires caked with mud and his wheels refused to turn until he washed the mud off in creek water.

Then it happened. He was descending a gnarly technical single-track around a curve when he slipped out on a greasy muddy patch in the shade. He scraped his knee on a rock, bruised a couple ribs and shattered his left wrist.

“I knew it was broken right away,” he said.

It was 30 miles to the nearest paved road where he could hitchhike to Taos. But it was too painful to bike—he couldn’t put any weight on his wrist. So, he backtracked to a campground where he could hole up in an outhouse out of the rain and call Search and Rescue, which had police take him to the hospital.

Long sat alone in a Super 8 motel in Taos, depressed after having put so much into his endeavor to have it end 700 miles from the finish line at the Antelope Wells border crossing.

“It was so frustrating. I was feeling so good, finding a flow, getting stronger, looking forward to the home stretch,” he said. “It was day 13 and I figured I had another three days. My goal had been to do the trip in 20 days and I was on pace to do it in 16 to 18 days. Had I kept the pace, I would’ve been in the top 20, maybe the top 15.”

Instead of taking a selfie at border, Long returned home continuing to follow the progress of 15-year-old Edyn Teitge of Hailey who did reach the New Mexico-Mexico border.

Now, he’s spending this winter teaching cross country skiing for the Vamps and Dons. And he’s coaching  Sun Valley’s first ski mountaineering, or ski-mo, team, which asks racers to race uphill on skis as fast as they can, follow that with multiple climbs and descents and descend towards the finish line.

It is slated to make its Winter Olympic debut in 2026.

Meanwhile, Long is looking toward next summer when he can attempt the Divide Tour again.

“It’s such a gift to be able to do it. And, while it was not all rainbows and butterflies, I had some amazing moments like the orange and purple sunset I saw after one mountain climb and descending an amazing long, winding path into Salida, Colo.,” he said.

“I grew a lot from my experience. Going in, I didn’t know if I could make that far—it’s so big and daunting. But I learned self-reliance, self-sufficiency. And when I didn’t think I could find a way through the pain, I realized I was so much more capable than I had realized.”

Long said he will approach the race differently next time.

“Doing over, I would have started more slowly. It’s easy to get excited. But if I’d paced myself better, maybe I would not have hit that low. But, ultimately, I loved the freedom of expression, the opportunity to test what I can do. I love to set my mind to something and take it day by day—it’s amazing what you can accomplish.”

Jackson Long and Rob Carter made a short film, “Dividing Lines,” using footage from Long’s ride. See it at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6MTzyb1n9A. Or, https://youtu.be/r6MTzyb1n9A.