the midnight start was a holdover from last year.  The nobo start is 7am. 
SOBO are starting at 7 am going in 20 person waves. Sounds like starts will be spread over a few hours.

NOBO grand depart is listed as midnight???  Seems weird to start at a different time than SOBO.

sofiane is on a roughly 12.5 day pace.  I think he is much further ahead of Mike Hall's pace than it appears b/c sofiane had to do an extra 5 hours on koko, so while it looks like sofiane has made 5 hrs in 6 days on the record, he has really made 10 hrs in six days on the record.

thanks for the info. i have been looking into a bryton 530.  I was wondering if you have an update and any info on how the 530 manages with a large track (e.g., tour divide 10,000 point track).  how is navigation, for example when there is a fork in the trail? can you zoom in and out on the track?

thanks

andrew

flyboy-  I think Koko is about 5 hours longer than the original route.  2-3 hours of hiking, longer and no pavement.

how are northbounders getting SPOTs (and to the start)?

thanks

Payton-
  How were the winds going north?

thanks

thought i would resurrect this thread.

I just took a quick look at Ashley Benns times - about 28.5 and 29.5 days sobo and 27.5 days nobo.

any new opinions on nobo?

Nobo is more appealing with the exception that banff is about 300 miles west of AW and winds are predominantly from the west.   

so how much snow does that mean?  1mile, 10miles?

thanks

just looking at the patterns, i would say yellow is ITT, pink is female, orange is Northbound, blue is southbound grand depart, white is unknown.

Kiwidave-
  thanks for the heads up.  i had somehow missed that post.

andrew

Kiwidave-
  you mean people who have registered their own personal spots, right?  I wrote to trackleaders but didn't hear back and assumed there will just be enough spots at the start for the folks who submitted letters of interest. 

thanks

thanks for the comments on north vs. south.  I live at 4500' so i'm not too worried about the elevation though i'm sure the longer ramp up to high elevation could give anyone more time to acclimate.  It also seems prevailing winds from the west are better for south bound.  Those factors along with the history of going south seem to be the predominant factors.

on the flip side the weather / road conditions should be nicer going north, you could get the big climbs out of the way when you are fresher and Banff is a nicer place to finish.  I'm still a little torn.

anyone have experience with northbound vs. southbound.  I can't find much on the topic.  I'm pretty sure i want to ride this summer but still not sure on the direction.  Northbound is more aesthetic to me.