Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

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frank9755
I put in an entry for this but withdrew after I did more research - and realised just how hard it would be! I would have needed a new bike + MTB skills which I don't possess.

Big challenges will be:
- getting over the first climb on the first day. I reckon a few people will either not make it and have to sleep at altitude or push too hard and damage themselves when not acclimatised.
- Resupply and carrying food. There are some long stretches with nothing so need to carry lots of food. Some people might run out, or find there is nothing at a little remote shop when they get there.
- Weather - could rain for a few days on end, with no shelter, no hotels, etc
- Crossing rivers - these are ok in the morning, might be ankle height, but by evening the flow builds up as the water melts. Could be waist, or maybe even neck height by sundown!
- Hike-a-bike - especially that last climb which will be walking up a goat track for a full day. Don't fancy doing that with plastic cleats.
- Bears and wolves and other wild stuff. They rarely attack humans. But it's also pretty rare that 80-odd tired humans put themselves on their own in the wild for night after night. I hope there isn't an incident, but if I was leading a hungry pack of wolves, I reckon a sleeping, isolated and exhausted rider in exposed territory might look like low-hanging fruit!
This will be a tough one and I expect there'll be a high dropout rate. The problem might be working out how to go about dropping out, given much of it is so remote.

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mespilus in reply to @frank9755

I wondered about the ability to carry enough water and food to get to the next re-supply point, and, what might be available there.
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Georgel in reply to @frank9755

Another issue could be 50 ravenous bikepackers descending on a tiny remote shop and clearing them out leaving nothing for the locals , I wonder if Nelson has been calling ahead to get them to stock up.
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hippy in reply to @frank9755

other wild stuff

This happened during tabr...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/07/bison-gores-california-woman-at-yellowstone-national-park-officials-say.html
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GoatandTricycle in reply to @frank9755

Yep a very average off and you could be in quite some trouble.
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Polky in reply to @frank9755

I did a bikepacking trip in Kyrgyzstan for two weeks in June/July and did some of the roads this race will take in. I'm looking forward to following it. I can confirm it will be tough!

We did it on 29er MTBs.

We didn't find water being an issue, there are loads of streams to filter from. I think I carried about 2 litres mostly but more before cooking. Food is tricky though. We had to carry five days worth of food for the first part of our trip, which take a lot of space. The latter part of our route did go through settlements but the range of food is quite limited in shops. The riders will have to make do with very basic supplies.

I don't think there are any animals that can harm you. We never spotted wolves or evidence of wolves and my guess is they are kept very much under control (or possibly made non existent) by the shepherds.

I think the biggest challenges will be weather and terrain. We largely had hot sunny weather and rode in shorts and t-shirts, but we also had snow. A lot of the route is over 3000m (getting up to 3,600 - 3,800m) and the weather arrives very quickly. We had literally a blizzard with horizontal snow about 15 minutes after warm weather and sunshine. I think a tent is essential rather than a bivvy, as are proper warm clothes. It was often below zero overnight.

The other challenge is understanding the how rugged the terrain is. All of the roads take longer than you expect, even if you expect them to take longer than you expect. Some of the parts where you expect gravel will be sapping corrugations, sometimes roads will disappear into animal tracks. Sometimes there will be river crossing where you are not expecting them. Some parts which are marked as tracks don't have a track at all and you just moving across the terrain. The hike a bike sections are tough and long and made tougher by the thin air. This is all part of the fun but you have to readjust your mileage expectations.

I also personally think a MTB would be generally faster than a gravel bike, and I for the parts we rode a fat bike or mid fat would have been handy! I also would have gone for flat pedals over spds, the hike a bikes trashed all of our cycling shoes so badly that the soles were coming away from the shoe.

It is the most spectacular place - they will have an incredible time.

Silk Road Mountain Race (SRMR)

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