Back in 2003, I managed to pull off a two-month, cross-country road bike tour on a budget of $10 a day. Spending closer to $80 or $90 a day for Tour Divide felt hugely luxurious. I also did it with equipment I had already been riding for more than a year, with a few minimal upgrades such as a new drivetrain.

But I fully agree with Chris. Get a good credit card and go at it no-holds-barred. The last thing you need out there is a crappy night of sleep because you couldn't swing for a $100/night hotel room at a crucial point.

I had a similar situation - no sponsorships, no hope for them. I bet most of the people who would participate in this event are that way. I spent about $2,000 out of pocket for the race itself, including transport from Salt Lake City to Banff (combination of a plane ticket and a three-way-split drive from Denver to Banff), about $400 in bike repairs in Steamboat Springs, food (mostly groceries, not many restaurant meals) and a whole lot of hotel rooms (comfort touring is the way to go if you ask me), and gas money for my parents driving from Antelope Wells to SLC. In my view, $2,000 seems like a bargain for a three-plus-week vacation. I think it's a misconception that riding the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route is prohibitively expensive.

Budgeting the time, on the other hand, is a whole different story.

Chris, be sure to invite me if you ever find the desire/time/funding. ;-) This woman, Claire, and I chatted quite a bit, mostly jokingly, about setting up a women's expedition to the pole. Since she worked at the pole, and knew people there, she believed she could set up some kind of support system as long as we could find enough sponsors, because it obviously would cost a fortune. Self-support is certainly much more interesting in terms of logistics and costs. 

So you couldn't find any successful bike trips from the coast to the South Pole? I just assumed it had been done before, road or not. I'll have to dig around one of these days to see what I can find. That would almost seem strange to me if no one has ever ridden/dragged a bicycle to the South Pole.

The ice road is called the McMurdo-South Pole Highway. They leveled snow and filled in crevasses, and it's marked by flags, and is frequently traveled by cats and tractors, so it's probably fairly well packed, although storms and wind I imagine have the potential to make much of it unrideable. Definitely makes South Pole travel decidedly more cush, although certainly not easy by any stretch of the imagination. But I think this road is what makes it possible for a person to take a bike to the pole. I'm not sure if anyone has done it yet on the road, however. But trying to travel overland with a bike ... yuck. Just thinking of breaking down a 150-pound bike to haul it over an ice block or around a crevasse makes me shiver. I'd pick skis for sure.

I was in contact for a little while with a woman who was from Wisconsin who worked through the summer at the South Pole a few years in a row. She thought it was completely feasable to ride the ice road from the coast to the pole. We never got too deep into a discussion of equipment or logisitics, but people have skied and hiked to the pole dragging sleds with all of the gear they needed. Why not rig up a fully self-supported system for a bike? Chris mentioned Mike's Nome setup with the panniers. Definitely doable. I'm sure it takes an ungodly amount of planning, not to mention a fair chunk of discretionary funds that include an emergency rescue plan, but it does seem fully possible for the hardcore types. I believe the distance is in the 900-mile range? Maybe 3-4 weeks, depending on conditions.

The packraft, on the other hand, is suicide. You've read Shackleton, right?

There's something to that jostling theory; I think that's why water in a bladder doesn't freeze as quickly, because it is constantly being jostled around in the backpack. There's also more insulation in backpacks, but my water in bladders is always the last to form ice crystals, and will generally just be slushy even after my bottles have frozen solid (which they do, even inside of insulated neoprene sleeves.)

My water-freezing solution for long or multiday events is to carry a six-liter MSR bladder with a small spout for pouring (no hose), and one 32-ounce bottle in an insulated sleeve. I drink from the bottle and refill it with the bladder. Having only one bottle minimizes the amount of dead weight you're carrying in the form of solid ice, which I think you'll find most bottles will be ringed with after more than a half day in subzero temps.

The actions of those people in the Grand Canyon are flabbergasting. It's too bad states don't have laws to charge people like that with some kind of crime ... sending unnecessary calls for help and taking away resources where they are truly needed.

I've recently tried to picture what I'd do in different situations, including a situation like yours, especially recently, when I have ventured solo several hours away from any source of help. It's all going to be compounded next season when I set out on more multiday fastpacking trips. I always carry the SPOT with me, usually turned off, as well as emergency bivy gear. I think I would have to be in a situation that was without a doubt life-threatening before I'd send out a SPOT help signal. Self rescue is usually an option if you can achieve some kind of mobility and have a way to keep yourself warm. I think you did the right thing crawling out, although I can imagine that was probably one of the hardest things you have ever done. I agree that any type of rescue puts other lives on the line, especially in the alpine regions.

[Tired from a tough hike? Rescuers fear Yuppie 911]

Not really bikepacking specific, but I thought people annoyed by the proliferation of SPOT might appreciate this article.

Tired from a tough hike? Rescuers fear Yuppie 911

By TRACIE CONE
Associated Press Writer
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — Last month two men and their teenage sons tackled one of the world’s most unforgiving summertime hikes: the Grand Canyon’s parched and searing Royal Arch Loop. Along with bedrolls and freeze-dried food, the inexperienced backpackers carried a personal locator beacon — just in case.
In the span of three days, the group pushed the panic button three times, mobilizing helicopters for dangerous, lifesaving rescues inside the steep canyon walls.
What was that emergency? The water they had found to quench their thirst “tasted salty.”
If they had not been toting the device that works like Onstar for hikers, “we would have never attempted this hike,” one of them said after the third rescue crew forced them to board their chopper. It’s a growing problem facing the men and women who risk their lives when they believe others are in danger of losing theirs.
Technology has made calling for help instantaneous even in the most remote places. Because would-be adventurers can send GPS coordinates to rescuers with the touch of a button, some are exploring terrain they do not have the experience, knowledge or endurance to tackle.
Rescue officials are deciding whether to start keeping statistics on the problem, but the incidents have become so frequent that the head of California’s Search and Rescue operation has a name for the devices: Yuppie 911.
“Now you can go into the back country and take a risk you might not normally have taken,” says Matt Scharper, who coordinates a rescue every day in a state with wilderness so rugged even crashed planes can take decades to find. “With the Yuppie 911, you send a message to a satellite and the government pulls your butt out of something you shouldn’t have been in in the first place.”
From the Sierra to the Cascades, Rockies and beyond, hikers are arming themselves with increasingly affordable technology intended to get them out of life-threatening situations.
While daring rescues are one result, very often the beacons go off unintentionally when the button is pushed in someone’s backpack, or they are activated unnecessarily, as in the case of a woman who was frightened by a thunderstorm.
“There’s controversy over these devices in the first place because it removes the self sufficiency that’s required in the back country,” Scharper says. “But we are a society of services, and every service you need you can get by calling.”
The sheriff’s office in San Bernardino County, the largest in the nation and home to part of the unforgiving Death Valley, hopes to reduce false alarms. So it is studying under what circumstances hikers activate the devices.
“In the past, people who got in trouble self-rescued; they got on their hands and knees and crawled out,” says John Amrhein, the county’s emergency coordinator. “We saw the increase in non-emergencies with cell phones: people called saying ’I’m cold and damp. Come get me out.’ These take it to another level.”
Personal locator beacons, which send distress signals to government satellites, became available in the early 1980s, but at a price exceeding $1,200. They have been legal for the public to use since 2003, and in the last year the price has fallen to less than $100 for devices that send alerts to a company, which then calls local law enforcement.
When rescue beacons tempt inexperienced hikers to attempt trails beyond their abilities, that can translate into unnecessary expense and a risk of lives.
Last year, the beacon for a hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail triggered accidentally in his backpack, sending helicopters scrambling. Recently, a couple from New Bruswick, British Columbia activated their beacon when they climbed a steep trail and could not get back down. A helicopter lowered them 200 feet to secure footing.
In September, a hiker from Placer County was panning for gold in New York Canyon when he became dehydrated and used his rescue beacon to call for help.
With darkness setting in on the same day, Mono County sheriff’s deputies asked the National Guard for a high-altitude helicopter and a hoist for a treacherous rescue of two beacon-equipped hikers stranded at Convict Lake. The next day they hiked out on foot.
When eight climbers ran into trouble last winter during a summit attempt of Mt. Hood in Oregon, they called for help after becoming stranded on a glacier in a snowstorm.
“The question is, would they have decided to go on the trip knowing the weather was going bad if they had not been able to take the beacons,” asks Rocky Henderson of Portland Mountain Rescue. “We are now entering the Twilight Zone of someone else’s intentions.”
The Grand Canyon’s Royal Arch loop, the National Park Service warns, “has a million ways to get into serious trouble” for those lacking skill and good judgment. One evening the fathers-and-sons team activated their beacon when they ran out of water.
Rescuers, who did not know the nature of the call, could not launch the helicopter until morning. When the rescuers arrived, the group had found a stream and declined help.
That night, they activated the emergency beacon again. This time the Arizona Department of Public Safety helicopter, which has night vision capabilities, launched into emergency mode.
When rescuers found them, the hikers were worried they might become dehydrated because the water they found tasted salty. They declined an evacuation, and the crew left water.
The following morning the group called for help again. This time, according to a park service report, rescuers took them out and cited the leader for “creating a hazardous condition” for the rescue teams.

Scott makes a really good point - when it comes to rules, the devil's in the wording. Wording them more specifically so they're not as open to a huge range of interpretations is key, and I'm grateful that the people who have put their heart and soul into this genre are open to reworking them rather than treating the originals like unammendable, absolute tenets. Because, as most rules stand now, it's perfectly understandable that some participants grumble about racers sharing stuff between themselves while they themselves take trail magic favors, and others shun trail magic favors but think it's OK to call their mommy from the top of an 11,000-foot ridge in New Mexico because the pay phone in Horca, Colo., wasn't working (averts eyes and raises hand.) The results are that accusations are thrown around (and the continual mention of the inhaler on the CTR is exactly that), and suddenly gray light is thrown on everybody's hard effort. When in fact, none of these practices are outright against the rules as they are written.

This stuff is important.

I agree with Dave. These aren't ITTs, and they're not compeltely self-supported. Groups that travel together have an advantage over soloists no matter what they're passing between their bikes. Arguing whether something could or could not change the outcome of a race is moot - it's totally subjective. What could make all the difference in the world for one person could be meaningless for another. That doesn't mean I'm an advocate of full-out RAAM-style support, but I do think the race rules could use more clarity.

 I do think racers should be allowed to help each other out without restrictions, because any restrictions are subject to interpretation (hanger versus Twix) only serve to sever ethics and raise ire. Sure, helping out another racer with a mechanical affects the people further back, but so does everything the leaders do, including choosing to ride together and spur each other toward harder efforts. It's a race, after all. If you want perfect, self-supported conditions, I think you should do an ITT instead. And, since it's important to this community, perhaps the two should be judged differently.

I also think the "self-supported between towns" mentioned here is a good rule. After my experiment in the Tour Divide this year, I actually came to accept and support the cell phone ban of the GDR. I only used mine to communicate with my family (and make a couple of TD call-ins, usually while standing next to a broken pay phone). But something felt strangely off about reaching out in that way, and was usually more of a downer than anything. That's why I'm such a big SPOT advocate. It allows communications with loved ones without constantly cutting into the spirit of the experience.

But I guess we all have different views about this, and all most of us are really doing is just pulling out the soap box on a random Web forum. But I'll be interested to see what changes are made to the rules lists come 2010.

Few (if any?) riders go solo for 20th place.

(Adverts eyes and raises hand)

Every one of us has different motivations. In my eyes, that's the beauty of this community.

I haven't had a chance to tear through this whole mammoth thread but I really like where you guys are going. Lots of this stuff does need a clearer definition, or else you have some racers running down cars and begging for handouts while others disqualify themselves for accepting an orange from a stranger. It may seem laborious right now, but I'm guessing everyone will be better off when all of us and our wide-ranging motivations are on the same page.

OK Jill, since I am the only one calling out SPOT use as problematic, I must be the purist.  Never thought I'd wear that handle...

I do think you have applied a gross generalization in this case based on experiences with other events and organizers, and also that you miss the heart of my concerns.  In general I like your rules for the dream race, especially #9.

Sorry, Dave. I had no intention of singling you out. I was really just referring to the general (I agree, overgeneralized) conflict, dating all the way back to the Great Cell Phone Debate, that new technologies/participants/paradigms might detract from the "spirit" of ultraracing.

Mostly what I do not support are blanket bans on SPOTs, sat phones, cell phones, etc. I do see your point on the public dissemination of information affecting the outcome of races. What I fail to see is how SPOT information is really all that different than the old forms of relaying race info, such as the GDR call-ins. In the 2008 Great Divide Race, Geoff would call me from pay phones in towns and I would relay to him everything I knew about where his competitors were. He didn't have a cell phone and I didn't have SPOT info, but it was still the same general practice that could, I agree, affect Geoff's behavior and therefore the outcome of the race. You could ban this type of conversation to prevent this from happening, or ban all public dissemination of race information, but that's the slippery slope of fundamentalism that I don't like.

Lawmaking is a slow, painful process for sure. Have you ever sat through a legislative committee meeting? Ugh. And I'm certainly not a lawmaker; I'm just a concerned citizen throwing out my two cents from the back row, because the outcome of the rules debate may effect my future participation in events (as it already has in the Ultrasport.)

It seems to me like this debate comes down to purists vs. progressives. As in most aspects of life, it's pretty much impossible for these two groups to come to an agreement, but I'm glad to see y'all are trying.

I'm a progressive fast-tourist, attracted to the ultraracing genre because I prefer camaraderie to solitude and defined challenges to vague journeys. I want the rules in the events I choose to participate in to be consistent and fair to all participants, but I don't want them to attempt to dictate what kind of experience I should be having.

A lot of the purist arguments really are trying to establish a greater level of fairness, but there also are some that are simply trying to establish an unrealistic fundamentalism, that at its extreme suggests that people should cut off most if not all interaction with the outside world, limit interactions with other racers and pretend they are moving through a bubble of complete self-support. Suggestions to ban hotel stays and censor topics of conversation with family members point to this kind of extremism.

It seems to me that the solution is to let each organizer of their own event lay out their own rules. Maybe the days of a singular self-support standard are done. If each race has its own set of rules, those of us who have particular hopes and expectations for an event can choose accordingly. For example, I'm in love with the route and conditions of the Iditarod Trail, but I might not enter the actual race again as long as SPOTs remain banned. To me, many of the arguments against false communications ring somewhat hollow. All I see is the race organizers telling me what I can and cannot communicate with my friends and family, generating a (in this day and age) false condition of being completely cut off from the world and thus trying to dictate what kind of experience I should be having. That's fine if you want to keep your old-school "The cowards won't show and the weak will die" stigma around your race; it's just not for me. I'll do something else, and when I'm strong enough and experienced enough, I'll come back to the trail outside the confines (and comforts) of the race and experience it on my own.

In my ideal race, the rules would be:

1. Nothing required, nothing prohibited. Carry all the junk you like.
2. No preplanned support. No accepting support from people you know. No begging for support. No support from SPOT-stalking fans. Otherwise, trail magic is OK. (Admittedly, still gray areas here, places where you have to make a judgment call.)
3. All sharing/support among racers, as long as it is established after the race begins, is fair game. You decide whether or not you want to help your competitor.
4. Free speech. All communications are fair game, unless they are being used to arrange outside support. (In which case the communications still aren't banned, but the resulting support will net a DQ)
5. Technology changes. Utilize it or not; that's your decision.
6. Follow the course with reasonable completeness ... reasonable meaning if you go into one entrance of a gas station and out another, thereby missing six yards of the actual "course," you won't be disqualified, but will if you veer off for several miles and never backtrack.
7. Shipping OK to commercial addresses.
8. Use of private addresses, to sleep or eat, even in the case of unplanned trail magic, should be banned, unless the private residence is established as a race checkpoint before the race.
9. In case of emergencies, you can be transported off route - doesn't matter if it's forward or backward or somewhere in outer space, but you must return to exactly where you left the route under your own power, even if you were taken hundreds of miles away.
10. Other areas I'm missing. I'm kinda doing this off the top of my head right now.

But that's just my ideal race ... not that I'm ever going to create one. Maybe someday I will help my ex develop a 100-mile trail run along the ridges of Juneau, but that's a completely different game.

Thanks for keeping the discussion going. I think it's constructive. OK, back to making newspaper pages for me.

Toby, I think the emotional reaction comes from your calling out racers who are also bloggers (not a particularly large group), and then refusing to state what you mean.

As far as rules go, they did become an emotional issue in the Tour Divide this year, as you probably know. Any blantant violations were either self-disqualified or relegated. But there was a lot of muttering and even vitrol surrounding the gray-area stuff (and I agree, gray areas exist.) I heard a lot of petty complaints, including some complaining that racers "cut the course" because they saw pictures posted on the Web of people walking their bikes on a surface that obviously wasn't a road (but likely was right next to the road that was probably muddy and completely impassable.)

The gray areas exsist in how strictly you interpret the rules. It's like trying to interpret the 10 Commandments ... they seem direct, but there can be a broad view of how to follow "Thou Shalt Not Covet." Personally, I don't even know what this commandment means. Should I not covet food? Warmth? Just how strict about it do I need to be? It's my opinion that a lot of the self-supported ultraracing ethos is just as subjective.

My issue in the Tour Divide was with trail magic. I thought that any unplanned support, as long as it was absolutely unplanned, was OK. Others interpreted it more strictly, adding "no support from people I know," "no support from other racers" and even "no support that I don't pay for." These additions were put in by individual racers to clear their own conscience. They're nowhere in the rules. But something to that effect probably should be. Not because we are trying to "bring the race down to our level," but because we are geniunely unclear on how to interpret a rule that obviously has a number of different interpretations.

I think what it comes down to though, is intergrity. If you finished the race with a clear conscience, that's what matters.

There is no more Kokopelli Trail Race. Sometimes a handful of people get together and time trial it, even alternating directions and starting at midnight as per the traditional race. But there is no organized event.

Earlier this summer, I toured the route over two days. It was a beautiful trip and I was able to see most of it, thanks to minimal night riding. I'd highly recommend this approach. :-)

I have a Marmot CWM -40 degree bag and it is a bundle of goodness. Some friends and I have been camping recently during a couple just-below-freezing nights, and I like to sprawl out with the zipper pulled wide open while they shiver in their 32-degree synthetic bags.

I've also slept in it down to 35 below. It's still a bundle of goodness.

But it won't ride over bottomless fluff in mid winter.

Skis, however, will. ;-)

I've run the gamut of bikes I've used to ride on snowmobile/ski trails ... a full-suspension 26er with studded tires, a rigid with (40mm?) SnowCats, a Pugsley with Large Marge/Endomorph and a Pugsley with 80mm/Endomorph. Snow bikes unquestionably become more versatile as wheels get bigger, but they are, in the end, still bikes. They won't move forward if they can't get traction.

Stoves also are the only method of generating water in winter conditions. I defintely understand their use as a survival mechanism. I'm just not the type of person who carries one for pleasure. $5.99 packets of freeze-dried dinners just don't do it for me, especially when you can achieve the same number of calories in a $0.89 king-sized Snickers Bar, deliciously, in seconds! Mmmmm ... chocolate.

That said, I'm certainly not a candy bar purist. If one of my traveling companions insists on cooking up a box of Annie's pasta, I'm definitely not going to turn it down. But as far as I'm concerned, my Whisperlite has one and only one purpose ... melting snow.

I've never done a backcountry backpacking trip longer than five days, but I just don't understand the point of camp stove cooking, other than as a feel-good activity or a way to kill some time. The same lightweight nutrition can be found in sandwiches, energy bars, smoked salmon, lots of things. Maybe that's just me, though. I don't cook at home, either.

You can be a caffeine junkie and still get away with no stove/fire. They're called chocolate-covered espresso beans and they are delicious.

I'm more of a water hog, carried a hiker-pro-type filter and hardly used it. But I think that has to do with my water hog habits more than anything. I rarely left a town without at least a gallon of water on my back, and I had the capacity to carry 2.4 gallons. It also helps that the temperature only rarely even broke 80 degrees, at least in the weather window I marched through.

At 11 ounces, the water filter will buy you a lot of peace of mind, however. I'm sure tablets are perfectly safe and I've used them before myself, but I've also noticed that even in extreme desperation, I have a hard time forcing down what seems like "dirty" water, and never drink enough.

Chris, another fun fact about salami, tortillas, and cheese ... edible and tasty when frozen.