BY KAREN BOSSICK
Edyn Teitge fueled himself on frozen burritos at gas stations. He pedaled through snow, sleet, rain and 110-degree temperatures.
And 19 days and 13 hours and 14 minutes after he left Banff, Canada, the 15-year-old Hailey youth put down his foot at the U.S.-Mexican border, becoming the youngest solo bicyclist to finish the Tour Divide Race down the spine of the Continental Divide in under 25 days.
“I went in as fast as I could because I was being chased by a thunderstorm,” said Edyn, a sophomore at Sage School. “The finish was pretty anticlimactic. You see the lights at the Antelope Wells border patrol in the distance and you roll up and you’re there. My dad was waiting there in our Prius and he took a photo to show I’d made it, then we drove to a hotel and it was pretty nice sleeping in a bed for the first time in nearly three weeks.”
The Tour Divide race covers 2,745 miles of ultra-endurance bikepacking along the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route through Alberta, Canada; Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and New Mexico. The record, set in 2016, is 13 days, 22 hours and 51 minutes.
Edyn started the race with 225 people, who had come from as far away as Germany, Australia, Ecuador and Scotland. Temperatures were in the 60s--perfect for riding--and the majesty of the Canadian Rockies was inspiring.
But the weather turned on the second day as the cyclists cycled into the United States and Glacier National Park area. Rain poured at low elevations; a couple inches of snow piled up on mountain passes.
Edyn put on a puffy jacket as sleet stung his cheeks and rode through the dark, the turn of the front wheel on his Rodeo Labs custom gravel bike generating power for his bike light.
The misery continued on the third day.
“It kept raining and snowing, and my rain pants were not keeping the rain out,” said Edyn. “A lot of people dropped out at that point. I was cold, not liking the snow, but I told myself I had to keep riding because, when I was riding, I was keeping warm. Finally, the sun started coming out when I got to Helena and the temperature was 90 degrees by the time I got to the Montana border.”
Edyn’s father Miles Teitge stayed in close proximity, following his son’s progress via a tracking beacon that pinpoints bicyclists’ coordinates.
“This race is completely self-supported,” said Miles. “I wasn’t allowed to bring him any food or interfere with his experience. It was kind of excruciating to watch and witness…the body after 20 days of riding is going into a deep deficit on sleep and food and the wear and tear is intense. But one of the beauties of this kind of event is that the subculture of bikepackers are in general a great group of people and I knew that if something happened to him on the trail someone would have come across him and helped him.”
In Wyoming Edyn navigated a windy 110-mile, waterless stretch of the Great Basin Desert listening to books on tape like “The Long Walk” about a man escaping a Polish work camp, “Miracle in the Andes” about a rugby team’s attempt to survive following an airplane crash, “And There was Light” about Abraham Lincoln and “Beneath the Scarlet Sky” about a young man who helped Jews escape the Nazis through an underground railroad.
At times, he switched to rap music and the music of the Grateful Dead and Lynard Skynard.
He stopped at waterfalls and watched vivid sunsets and moon rises, riding an average of eight to 10 miles an hour. He tallied an average five miles an hour overall, counting the stops to eat and sleep under his ultralight backpacking tent.
“I slept six hours every night except the last three nights.”
While he mostly subsisted on gas station food, he called ahead to some towns to order a hamburger that would be waiting for him when he got there. In Pie Town, N.M., he scarfed down a slice of strawberry pie and got a slice of pecan pie to go.
As he made his way into New Mexico, he was dogged by temperatures that zoomed to 110 degrees and afternoon thunderstorms that left the roads muddy with gooey clay he had to scrape off his bike in order to keep riding.
“I was in the Gila Wilderness and lightning flashed and instantly it went boom. I tried to embrace the heat. There was nothing I could do about it—and there was not much shade. I said: I’ve gotta do this,” said Edyn, whose longest day was 190 miles.
“He was pretty exhausted when he reached the finish, having gone through summer monsoons and clay that will stop you in your tracks,” said Miles. “And it was so hot—when you’re exposed like that it’s no joke—he was really suffering some days. That was hard for me to see him being so worn down, but he had a really good rhythm, and he was single-focused and wanting to make it happen.”
Edyn was introduced to bike packing by his father, who works as a bike mechanic at The Elephant’s Perch. He took his first bike pack trip with his father and a friend and his father when he was 10 biking out Warm Springs over Dollarhide Summit and dropping into Pine and Featherville. It opened his eyes to the freedom of being able to get on his bike and go places.
Two years ago, he raced in the Idaho Smoke ‘n’ Fire 400, which takes bikers 418 miles with 41,000 feet of climbing on unpaved road and single track from Boise to Ketchum before heading north to Stanley, over to Lowman and back to Boise.
“Early on I realized that Edyn has a certain competency as far as working on bicycles, being able to navigate courses and having the courage to spend the night out alone,” Miles said. “He’s learned to be competent out in the elements, to wear the right clothing, to feed himself.”
Edyn wants to challenge himself on other rides, including the 600-mile North to South Colorado bikepacking race, the Pinyons and Pines bikepacking race in Arizona, the Atlas Mountain Race in Morocco and the Hellenic Mountain Race in Greece.
“The Divide is one of the most famous, biggest bikepacking races so it’s on a lot of bucket lists,” he said. “I’d definitely do it again, but next year I’m focusing more on cross country racing—1.5-hour races with the Sun Valley Devo team, which races around the country in places like Montana, Arkansas and Utah. I like racing, seeing how far I can push my body, how well I can persevere. I love biking places you can’t go in a car.”
Edyn’s adventure has inspired another Teitge.
“I’m thinking of doing the Tour Divide Race next year,” Miles said. “A good way to mark my 50th birthday.”
POSTSCRIPT:
Jackson Long, who can be found serving vegan fare at the Wylde Beet, was in the top 20 overall on this year’s Tour Divide Race when he hit a patch of greasy mud and lost his front wheel. The brunt of the fall fractured his wrist and had to scratch 700 miles from the finish.
“Bummed it ended the way it did, but I’m already looking forward to going back next year,” he said.