Picking up where I left off in my first report, I departed Brush Mountain Lodge in the heat of the afternoon on Friday and did another huge drive south to Angel Fire, New Mexico. If you’re wondering about it being on the route, well it’s not, but I still spent a couple days there unwinding, catching up on sleep and shooting the Revolution Enduro (I’m their photographer). On nearly all of the Tour Divides where I’ve been out there for more than a week or so I’ve taken a day or two off in the middle, and this year was no different.

After getting a bunch of work out the proverbial internet door Monday morning, I made my way further south for my first night in a hotel and a real bed in Socorro, NM, where I’d be ideally positioned to either head to the north or south side of the Gila Mountains depending on how far Robin Gemperle would ride. At this point, I was committed to getting the finish despite it putting me a long ways away from the rest of the racers. He rode faster and farther than expected, and so it was south to Silver City where I’d go full ninja-dot-stalker mode as he rode into town. At one point I was parked within 15 feet of his bike at a gas station, just watching his refuel efficiency and discipline.

From Silver City, I headed south of town and waited on Tyrone Ridge, which normally provides a nice southern view of the Gilas. Instead, like the previous year, thunderstorms rolled in and it was a bit of a lightning magnet. I think this was the first real inclement weather Robin had experienced on his entire ride, which is a little mind boggling—thinking of the good timing and luck he had with his ride.

The storms were intermittent, so Robin’s last half day on the route wasn’t all rain. Until later in the night…

His final evening on the route would mark the return of my Tour Divide discomfort. That came in the form of very little sleep. I set an alarm to go off every hour so I could check his position, and when he arrived in Hachita around 11:00 p.m., it was time for me to roll toward the finish. The sub-two-hour sleep was better than nothing, and like a Swiss train he arrived on time. The fastest ever truly unsupported Tour Divide finish, official records and FKTs be damned.

On that note, let’s all give Robin Gemperle a huge round of applause and congratulations. That was a near perfect ride, and one that will stand as a high mark for the Tour Divide for years to come. No flats, no mechanicals, and he rode with 100% of the same parts (and kit) on the bike with near perfect weather and route conditions from start to finish. Who even cares about the reroute in that context as it was insignificant in time or miles, but his ride was, respectfully, on a whole other level of ability and achievement—outstanding!

I’ve seen many comments online about his light kit, yada yada, and what if. Well, take a close look at that bike and setup. Top to bottom it’s meant for speed, and he was 100% committed. If you want to be the fastest, there will always be an element of risk involved, but oh how sweet it is to fly without a safety net and really get it right. To be fair, there were a number of light kits out there this year, and perhaps it’s just an evolution of the sport. Gone are the days of talking about sleep deprivation, hello carbohydrate consumption per hour and TSS scores.

After leaving Antelope Wells, I went straight back to my hotel room in Lordsburg to work some more and get a few hours of sleep before the 11:00 a.m. checkout. Ouch, it would be my second and final hotel room of the Tour Divide. At this point I had some resupplying and planning to do, so I rolled back to Silver City to prepare for the next big push of living out of the back of my F150 until I got back home. As it happens, the timing was just all wrong to try and get photos of Jens, Max, and Jochen on the reroute.

The Gila is a rough, rugged, and inhospitable place where a lot of things can go wrong in a hurry. I’d told myself after the last time I drove through the Gila in 2012 to never do that again, and I wasn’t about to dismiss that pledge and repeat the experience. At the time it was hard to know whether I’d even have enough light to get photos of Jochen or Max, and the lack of a reliable cell signal meant I’d be heading in blind. Additionally, when I factored in driving through the Gila on a narrow dirt road with limited sight with the trio I was chasing coming down the same road, it was a gamble I wasn’t going to take. Safety first.

Fortunately, I was happy with the photos I’d already taken of them, which made the decision to drive around the west side of the Gila and rejoin the route to the north that much easier. I made a quick detour to see the section of the route where it enters the Plains of San Agustin—I had some time on my hands with a day-plus gap until the next group of racers. The viewpoint from this northwestern part of the plains is interesting, but you really need to get to the south end of this valley to behold the majesty of this landscape. Notably, I photographed Eszter Horanyi there in 2012 and Uba Batholmes there in 2023, and it’s a location that evokes fond memories for me. If you ever find yourself here, be sure to keep looking over your left shoulder as the views get better and better the further south you travel.

That same evening I’d hoped for clear skies to work on more astrophotography, but nope. At least the sunset was a consolation. I thoroughly enjoyed staying in the El Malpais National Conservation Area where dispersed camping is allowed as opposed to the nearly always full campground on the monument land. Without another person in sight for miles, a restful night’s sleep ensued. Good cell reception was a bonus!

I met back up with the race by waiting for Xavier Chiriboga the next day as he turned onto Pie Town Road for the long push to Pie Town.

Surprisingly, the road was incredibly smoother this year than I could remember any other year, and Xavier made short work of it.

Xavier’s bike with hand-written notes of encouragement.

Xavier made it to Pie town just in time to get a couple sandwiches before the cafe closed at 4:00 p.m.

Next was a quick jog north on the route to cross paths with Mike Martin. Coincidental obscure fact: years ago when I raced on the road as an amateur in Arkansas, I had a teammate named Mike Martin.

The trio of Dan Connell, Maarten Vanhaverbeke, and singlespeeder Andrew Onermaa were not far behind just as the evening light was getting good. Andrew stopped for a quick adjustment or snack and was just out of frame for this shot. To me, this is a classic Tour Divide photo with racers in the thick of it, nice evening light, and a big empty expansive western landscape.

Making the most of the evening light I leap-frogged down the road a few times to grab more shots. After the long straight stretch that follows the highway section through El Malpais, Pie Town Road climbs into some different terrain that’s hillier and broken up with stands of pinion and cedar. Andrew would be my main subject through here as he was leading the singlespeed race and the only other photos I had of him was from the first hour of the Tour Divide. Andrew pressed on to be the first singlespeed to reach Antelope Wells.

No fear, just one gear.

Attitude is everything out here, and when you’re in good spirits, the miles click right by. The same applies to me as I’ve learned first hand—particularly last year—that a positive mental attitude can open the door to good fortunes as well as good luck. Last year was an incredible challenge for me, nearly every day, and I vowed to hopefully not repeat that this year. Learning to let the statistically-certain odds of failure not ruin my days, and instead accept them as part of what it takes to succeed, a sort of challenge to learn and most importantly keep trying. An inescapable statistic of life if you will, where our attitude and mindset plays a quantifiable role in determining how those statistics shape our future actions.

In the early days of this year’s race I wrote to the BIKEPACKING.com team that I was transitioning from being reactive to methodical in my coverage. My methodology was to be prepared and win the safe bets on photos when the timing was right, and to also strive at creating photography that was more than a picture but instead an ethereal yet tangible feeling that could inspire someone to want to experience that photo. Of course, statistics also come heavily into play with those types of shots, and they required my acceptance for failure. It’s really a numbers game of gambling investment on return, and if you set yourself up for success, then success statistically becomes a more likely possibility.

When it comes to the investment required for the Tour Divide, I’ve seen a number of folks go all in, only to roll snake eyes. ‘Dirty‘ Dan Connell is one of those people, and it was a joy to see him out here again this year. The few times we crossed paths he was thriving, and I have a pretty good hunch it was from the process of learning and repeatedly trying to beat the odds against Tour Divide house. Dan was the first American to finished this year’s race, and to me that’s something to be proud of, and it’s a prize unto itself.

With the last rays of the day gone, I rolled north on the route to return to the same camp spot for the night. On the way there I captured a few more shots of Benjamin Hoehn in some fading yet dreamy dusk light.

My next day would be spent getting closer to home, and making sure to get more photos of the lead woman, Nathalie Baillon. I timed it to catch her rolling into—or at least through—Grants, NM where I could possibly include some local flavor of the route and scenes from the American west. The fabled route 66 goes right through Grants, and while its heyday of highway vacation travels have faded, the remnants of this iconic part of Americana history remain.

The concept of seeing and experiencing this history and culture of the West was not lost on me. Besides the beautiful landscapes, the Tour Divide (and GDMBR) gives riders a chance to experience some wonderfully diverse and genuine cultures, a melting pot of people who call the United States and Canada home. Oftentimes, the media and social media fails horribly at showing just how great and diverse these people and places are. Instead of showing generosity, humility, and resilience we’re fed lazy mis-portrayed concepts of ignorance, conflict, and failure. One of these days I may just make it my mission to photograph the history and people along this route through the lens of respect and admiration, but until then, as Public Enemy professed, “Don’t believe the hype.”

When Nathalie rolled into Grants, I had practically missed most of the iconic murals and signs due to bad timing, until finally I got a break in the traffic to catch her rolling by a now shuttered hotel.

I finally caught up with Nathalie at the gas station that’s the last resupply stop for racers before the route heads south to Pie Town. We talked briefly about her ride, the broken rear wheel saga, and her getting caught in some nasty mud in the Jemez Mountains before reaching Cuba, New Mexico.

After that, I made one more hop down the route to capture her in the El Malpais National Monument with the black lava field behind her. Early Spanish explorers named this region El Malpais, meaning the badlands, because of its barren rugged landscape that had been shaped by millennia of vulcanism and lava flows. Nathalie would ride on to become the first woman to finish the Tour Divide.

From Grants, I closed the next big gap in the race, which was between the first and second placed women. When I first made the drive from Grants to Cuba in 2011, it wasn’t an area I wanted to photograph. At that time, the section of the route that passed through the Navajo Reservation was quite depressed. While challenges undoubtedly still exist, there are new solar farms occupying large tracts of land, and at face value, it seems the people there may finally be getting some positive input to their community. It was middle-of-the day hot, so I pressed on to Cuba and caught up with Scott Petrie and Ana Jager just as they were pedaling into town.

They stopped at the first Circle K in Cuba where I caught them fresh off the bike. Next was a shot of their bikes with a Navajo local, Castillo, who proceeded to pose and then tell us about his horse racing exploits.

Ana was having another solid ride, and of course, I beelined south on the route to get a better set of photos of her—hopefully without any cars speeding into the shot. It’s amazing how often I’ve been on an empty road with a perfect composition lined up, only to have a car appear out of nowhere and pass the racer at precisely the wrong moment, ruining the photo. Not this time! Ana rode on to take second place on a full-suspension mountain bike—once unheard of, but now becoming the new normal for a fast ride on the Divide.

I decided to skip the route from Cuba to Abiquiu through the Jemez Mountains because it’s some rough dirt road with no cell signal, and mostly because I wasn’t happy with any of the photos I’d taken there in previous years. On my drive to Abiquiu I saw even more elk. For whatever reason, they were on the move and I saw more elk this year than I’ve ever seen in my life. Easily over a thousand in different herds in the Gila and northern Jemez mountains.

Finally I got a night with clear skies and stayed up late working on Milky Way photos. This particular shot was one of my last with the light from Taos and Santa Fe lining the southeast horizon.

I enjoyed another morning of coffee and eggs cooked on my tailgate with these views of the Jemez mountains to the south from a sliver of USFS land outside of Abiquiu.



The rest of my morning was spent catching up with Karen Pocock and Alexandera Houchin, the then women’s 3rd and 4th place racers. There’s only one real place to refuel in Abiquiu, and it’s a popular place with a gas station/mini-market that has some of the best homemade burritos I got to eat on my entire trip. After weeks of garbage food it was welcomed, and I regretted not buying a couple more for the road.

Both Karen and Alexandera were in great spirits, and it was nice to catch them off the bike and able to talk. Karen was the first of them in and out with a quick resupply.

The gap between the two was small at that time, but just enough for me to head up route and catch Alexandera in front of this historic dilapidated pueblo parish.

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Alexandera for quite a few years now, and it was great to catch up on life with her on the bench in the shade of Bodes Market. This was her fifth and fastest time finishing the Tour Divide, and, gasp, also her first time racing it on a geared bike. The race and its racing style has changed a good bit from her first run down the Divide, and I’m certain there’s only a few people I can recall who’ve raced this thing with as much heart and soul as Alexandera. It’s hard to know what our futures hold, but I know I’ll always be happy to see my friend out doing what she loves.

Happy trails to you Alexandera!

At this point I had two main objectives; get photos of the 5th placed woman, and ride into the Continental Divide singletrack section from the south side near Hopewell Lake. I’d never been to Vallecitos in the daytime before, so I took the opportunity to see it and frame up this shot of Gillian Hatch looking at the mural of Vallecitos before riding through Vallecitos. Gillian would ride on to finish in fifth (Karen was third and Alexandera fifth), and it would be the only photo I got of here since the route got quite tight for me to be passing the racers before they got to El Rito, which would have negated me getting a ride in that day.

I learned another section of the route by driving from Vallecitos to Lake Hopewell, and it was nice to know I wasn’t missing out on any photo ops there. It’s basically the typical rough New Mexico dirt road that shakes your insides loose, and I doubt I’ll ever drive it on purpose again.

As I geared up to ride into the newer Continental Divide Trail singletrack section, I had no signal and wasn’t really sure if I’d see Quinda Verheul at all since I did divert off route briefly to have a look at the Lake Hopewell campground. Despite the name, it’s not actually on the lake itself and the lake was really more like a big pond in my book- both equally disappointing. I didn’t really feel like riding as the lethargy of all the windshield time had me in its grasp, but I did so anyway. It was good to get on the bike, to sweat, to be out of breath and feel my heart beating hard, and after a couple hours I could see the saddle where I turned around last year. In almost perfect timing Quinda appeared as a small dot at the edge of the meadow. I fired off photos as she rode towards me and then got this one when she stopped to say Hi.

We talked about how the race was going and how this part of the route was actually pretty fun. As I said last year, sure you can do the Tour Divide on a gravel bike but you’ll be a lot better off on a mountain bike, and I still stand by that statement. Bonus points and double fun if you do it on a full suspension!

To foreshadow my next post that will be up close and personal, I grabbed this portrait of Quinda and a few more (that are much happier) before she rode on. Her look in this photo reminds me of a story that Matthew Lee told me on the very first year I photographed the Tour Divide back in 2009. Basically, he told me about how if you’ve got demons in your closet that this route will bring them out. There will be plenty of time to think, and like it or not those demons will find their way to the forefront and you will have to confront them, which may not be enjoyable.

At that time, I was merely listening to Matthew and trying to empathize with that sentiment. It would be years before I really understood what he meant. When Mike Hall was hit and killed, it changed me. I couldn’t bring myself to even think of the Tour Divide that year, it just hurt too much. In 2018, as fate would have it, I found myself with a couple days to spare when crossing the route at an opportune time to catch Lewis Ciddor and Bailey Newbry riding through southern Colorado. I spent a night by myself on that route with my own demons in the Cochetopa Hills that year, and it’s something I’ve never really talked about, but it was my time.

It’s still a story I’m not ready to tell, but I mention it because I think now more than ever we all need to be aware of those demons and that they may be haunting someone right in front of us. It’s not so much meant to be a negative connotation, but more a matter of understanding that sometimes things happen that we have no control over. It doesn’t make it our fault, it’s just life, and if we can be a little kinder to each other it might make all the difference in the world to someone.

After I said, “Goodbye, have fun and be safe!” to Quinda I had a feeling my Tour Divide was over and the pull of Colorado calling me home was growing strong. Prior to that I’d played with the idea of shooting Indiana Pass, but the timing would have had me pushing my limits on sleep/safety thresholds, and so I took the easy route and rolled into Penitente where I parked and slept for the night leaving myself the option to run into Del Norte the next morning. It wasn’t to be. I woke up and knew without question my coverage for this year’s edition was done. On the way out I fired off this last photo of the route heading towards Del Norte with Indiana Pass far in the distance.

By the Numbers and Random Facts:

I drove 5349.3 miles beginning and ending at my home in Boulder, CO. I went from start to finish spending 19 days on the road with 17 nights in the back of my truck and two nights in a hotel because it made logistical sense. It was my first time going end to end, and the longest amount of time I’ve spent covering the Tour Divide. I’m not sure how much coffee I brewed and drank, but no doubt it’s measurable in gallons! My most satisfying meal was the carnitas burrito from Bodes in Abiquiu. My most listened to music was from my Pandora Bass Nectar edm station and my Johnny Cash Ghost Riders in the Sky station which featured a lot of Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline and scores from composer Ennio Marricone. I also listened to a lot of SiriusXM’s Chill, Ozzy’s Boneyard, The BBC news and NPR when I had no cell signal. Last but not least, I took 4543 photos using my Nikon Z8 and Z9 cameras with 8 different Nikkor lenses.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this coverage of an amazing edition of the Tour Divide. It’s certainly one that will stand out for many years to come. Cheers!

Check out the 2025 Tour Divide Tracker page to follow along on the live tracking map, see our Rigs of the Tour Divide roundups, and stay tuned in for more event coverage. Find it here.

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