Just for the record :  in 2013 I rode from Williams to Sedona through the Coconino Forest and over Casner Mountain to Sedona. The Casner Mnt trail is the only allowed corridor west of Sedona between the Red Rock Mountain Wilderness and the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness. The ride from Williams to the summit of Casner Mtn is very scenic and not too difficult. I found the descent from Casner Mnt to the Sycamore Canyon Rd much too steep and rough for riding with a loaded bike (average gradient 15%). I hiked most of it. More details on https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=3d2&page_id=323122&v=bD#pic_1558109

I guess this thread has inadvertently been kissed out of a deep sleep. But regarding the question of the original topic poster, if there is an interest in a single/double track on dirt east of Quebec-City, I can recommend the former Monk railway line, now a rail-trail. See https://ridewithgps.com/routes/28916123 . I hit upon it by chance, a recommendation of a local snowmobile rider. I hadn't seen it on the OSM-cycle maps of the region. From near Quebec-City you can follow it up to Pohenegamook, the most northern point of the lower 48 US-states. I rode it in reverse direction from near Poheneganook to Sainte-Perpetue. It was mostly in very good condition.

Regarding routes through France to Basel and Kandersteg, there are several options.
Eurovelo 5 goes from London to Calais and over Brussels and Luxemburg towards Basel.
If you like a more quiet and direct route with a theme, take the WW-1 Frontier route, that runs from Nieuwpoort (near Calais) over Reims and Verdun to Basel. There is a dutch guide that describes this route in detail.
From Basel to Kandersteg you can follow a combination of Swiss Fernradwege (long-distance cycle routes) or make a more direct cycle route using Google Maps.

The official map of Gran Senda de Malaga indicates that about half of the 35 hiking stages are suitable for bicycles, see http://static.malaga.es/malaga/subidas/descargas/archivos/5/8/182085/mapa-de-la-gran-senda.pdf
I believe you can easily find a detour for the other stages with tools like Ride-with-GPS. Actually Ride-with-GPS has one circular Gran Senda route https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18022831 . I am not sure whether it is the hiking trail or a bike route.
As I have toured that area several times, as a 15 min entertainment I constructed a circuit myself, fairly haphazard, see https://ridewithgps.com/routes/31649791

Edit :
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/18022831 is the hiking route. You can see this when you select OSM Outdoor as the background map (upper right corner). The GR-249 stages are dotted on the map when you zoom in.
I made a new route that bypasses the steep hiking trails using double-track roads. See https://ridewithgps.com/routes/31650662 . Compared to my previous route, this one is longer (680 km against 570 km), hillier (17000 m elevation gain against 11000 m) and about 30-40% unpaved. My other route is mainly on pavement.

Thanks for the reply. I find 60 miles per day quite impressive considering that you had to deal with reroutes, short daylight and seasonal closures.
Could you list the main sections that you found brutal riding?

After more route study, I am convinced of the upsides of going S-to-N in June-July, especially the much longer daylight and many services operating only in the tourist season.
Riding northbound, you have to wait for the clearing of winter snow on the high grounds. In 2014, riding north from Challis in mid-June, I found the Horse Creek Pass between Shoup and Alta-Montana still snowed-in and the rangers strongly discouraged an attempt on the Magruder road before July.
Also the Skyline Drive on the Wasatch Plateau in Utah seems impassible if parts of the road are still soaked from snowmelts. I read that you have to wait till summer for the roadbed to dry up, but one expert source even recommends to wait until mid-July.
See http://www.utahmountainbiking.com/trails/skyline-drive.htm .
Comments from riders that did the Skyline Rd in early summer are very welcome, as I am still planning to get there by end of June.

After a more detailed inspection of the Idaho route in the Benchmark Atlas and on Google maps in satellite view, I have to correct an estimate in my first post. The paved sections in Idaho/Montana add up to at least 225 miles, i.e. 18% of the route in these states.

Pete, thanks for tuning in. Your first-hand experience adds a lot to the paper analysis I did.
I suppose you had the GPS track when you started the ride. Did you also have a map or list of locations with services, like groceries, gas stations, restaurants?
How many days did your ride to SLC take? What was your average distance per day?

Before I started long-distance cycing, I grew up in mountaineering where it is common practise for guide books to start the description of a route with an overall grade, followed by a technical grading for distinct sections. The overall grade is usually a classification from Easy to Extremely Difficult in 5-6 steps. I believe that such a grading system would be very useful for bikepacking routes too.

Of course, not all aspects apply equally well. In mountain climbing, if you are not able to climb the crux of a route, you simply should not try it. Hence the technical difficulty of the crux is mostly a defining factor that goes heavily into the overall grade.  I don't think that applies for many MTB routes with the exception of very technical descents, rare in bikepacking. Exposure to life-threatening factors, such as rotten rocks, seracs and extreme altitude, is also less relevant in bikepacking. What should go into the overall grading besides road quality and sustained high gradients is remoteness and absence of water sources. I am very pleased that Bikepacking Roots is developing such a grading system, see www.bikepackingroots.org/bpr-route-rating-scale.html. I am very interested to see how it works out for their new Wild West route.

My advice is to start playing with route options on Ride-with-GPS!
There are numerous combinations and you can choose what you like best regarding distance, elevation gain, maximum gradients, remoteness, etc.
E.g. you can exit NE of Ketchum on the Trail Creek Pass Rd which is dirt and has a very good surface.
From Chilly you can go NW to Challis or NE over the Doublesprings Pass or SE to Mackay and further NE over the Pass Creek Summit.
In the Lost River Valley you can go NW towards Ellis or cross the Lemhi Range on the steep Big Windy Peak.
You can enter Montana from Leodore on the mild Railroad Canyon Rd over Bannack Pass or from Tendoy on the Lewis and Clark trail over the steep Lemhi Pass.
Use satellite view and streetview to inspect road surfaces and find services.
Here is just one proposal : https://ridewithgps.com/routes/29110483

[How hard is the Wild West route ?]

I searched the topic list on the Wild West Route, but surprisingly I couldn't find it. Hence this new topic, hoping that I didn't overlook one less clearly named.
I first saw a reference to this route late last year, November 2017, when the promotors published a sketch of the route on their site https://www.bikepackingroots.org/wild-west-route.html . I tried to map this sketch on Ride-with-GPS, but there were several points where I had no clue. For example, the route turns west north of Darby-MT, but there simply isn't any allowed trail going into that protected Wilderness area.

This changed when I found the full track, some weeks ago, probably provisional, on www.trackleaders.com/wildwest . The provisional route was done partly or fully by a bunch of test riders. The route can be zoomed-in to great detail, so there are no more questions marks about where it goes.
I mapped it by State. Because the route flip-flops between Montana and Idaho no less than 7 times, I took the two states together. Because more than 90% is in Idaho, I will mostly refer to it as Idaho. The excursions from Utah into Wyoming are even less substantial, so I simply denote it as Utah. So we deal with three States: Idaho, Utah and Arizona.

I find the new route very interesting. After mapping it, I found that I had cycled about 500 miles of this route in the past, on a total distance of about 2700 miles. So there are a lot of interesting new roads and scenery to discover.  I sincerely consider riding it next year. Relevant questions that I like to share some thoughts are:
- how hard is this route ?
- in what direction to ride it ?
- in what season ?
I hope others reply to my opinion and add more information.
Because my gut feeling is that the route is better done South-to-North, I will often discuss points in that direction. But it is easy to reverse the lists.

How hard is the Wild West route ?
Of course, a lot depends on the quality of the road surface. The promotors promise a section-by-section grading for road quality. Awaiting this information, I have to use more global characteristics. The first is the amount of climbing. This is quantified in the ratio "elevation gain/distance" which I call Climbing Index. Quantification of elevation gain is somewhat arbritrary: what size of surface roughness do you consider as elevation gain? But I will use EG here not in absolute value but relative. This eliminates a lot of arbitrariness.
Here is a comparison by State from the Ride-with-GPS data:
- Arizona : 886 miles ; 60170 ft ; 68 ft/mi.
- Utah/WY : 587 mi ; 40940 ft ; 70 ft/mi.
- Idaho/MT : 1259 mi ; 91130 ft ; 73 ft/mi.
So the route has a very consistent amount of climbing north and south. The Climbing Index is substantially higher than for the Great Divide Route. Using the same metric and the same tools (RWGPS) the GDMTB route has a Climbing Index of 59 ft/mi. In my opinion it is not wrong say that the new route is about 15% harder than the GDMTB route.
However, I don't think 70 ft/mi is outrageous. In a topic on the Idaho Hot Springs MTB Route, I proposed to extend the IHSR route by a loop that includes the Magruder route to Elk City and the return over Burgdorf and Yellow Pine. That loop amounted to 97 ft/mi !

Another comparison is on amount of pavement. Some years ago, before recent reroutes, I counted all paved roads longer than 5 miles in the GDMTB route. It worked out to a bit less than 25% of the total distance, much in contrast to what  Adventure Cycling said in its publications. Whether a road is paved is often difficult to see on maps, even in satellite view, so the estimate is prone to error. Here are my best guesses for the Wild West route:
- Arizona : about 240 mi paved, i.e. 27%
- Utah/WY : 68 mi paved, i.e. 11%.
- Idaho/MT : 77 mi paved, i.e. 6%.
Clearly the promotors took care to chain dirt roads as much as possible. In Arizona this ambition is frustrated by the Grand Canyon. You cannot bypass some of the major highways in that area, although they tried and got permission to include unknown dirt roads on the Navajo Nation territory. In my opinion, the ratio for Idaho could be further reduced by going from Arco to Ketchum over the Antelope Pass: less paved, challenging climb and better scenery.

Another useful measure of how hard a route is, is the distance between resupply points. When this distance exceeds the average daily distance, planning about food and liquids is more critical. This average daily distance depends on personal choice and ability, but I take 60 miles as a reasonable guess (i.e. 60*70=4200 ft average daily elevation gain) and 70 miles as do-able in case of need. There are 11 segments where 70 miles is not enough to get to the next resupply point:
- AZ: Young to Sedona, 126 mi
- AZ: Flagstaff to Cameron, 134 mi
- AZ : Marble Canyon to North Rim, 94 mi
- UT : Bryce to Loa, 83 mi
- UT : Salina to Soldier Summit (gas station), 124 mi
- UT : Soldier Summit to Kamas, 84 mi
- ID : Soda Springs to Blackfoot, 86 mi
- ID : Challis to Connor, 151 mi
- ID : Connor to Elk City, 119 mi
- ID : Pierce to Riverbend, 100 mi
- ID : Troy to Tobacco River, 87 mi
The Skyline Drive over the Wasatch Plateau, between Salina and Kamas, is clearly a bottleneck. Much depends on a single gas station. Another resupply problem is between Challis and Elk City. Connor-MT only has a small deli.
I did not do this analysis for the GDMTB route, but from memory I guess that in the GDMBR only the Great Divide Basin, the Gila and possibly the stage from Silver City to Antelope Wells qualify.

On an even more detailed scale you could ask for the number of 'unrideable' sections, like Fleecer Ridge (S-to-N) or Lava Mountain Trail. I looked for sustained gradients over 10% and found, fortunately, only a few. This depends of course on the direction. Going S-to-N I found
- about 2.5 mi at 11% near Pinai Peak
- about 1.5 mi at 13% in a climb to the North Rim
- a steep needle near 15% between Challis and the Morgan Creek Rd. It is easy to bypass over the lovely Morgan Creek Rd from US-93. Why spend energy on this nuisance with such long and tough climbs ahead?
- Horse Creek Pass between Shoup and Alta Montana, 5000 ft climb sustained near or over 10%.


What season ?
A distance of 2700 mi with an average daily distance of 60 mi, takes 45 days. Multiply by a factor of 7/6, for 1 day of rest or troubles or whatever per week, and you get to 53 day. In my experience, there is still a lot of winter snow in Idaho in June. So a start in the North near mid-July will finish the ride by end-of-August. Very hot in the south! Probably better to start mid-August and finish by end-of-September at the Mexican border.
Or start at the Mexican border mid-June. By the time you get to the Wasatch Plateau and the Magruder road, the snow has probably cleared. Finish end-of-July.

What direction ?
I am inclined to favor South-to-North. In the favorable time-window you have much longer daylight. I find it also more pleasant to move to cooler region as the summer develops, sun on your back.

An update:
Last year I repeated the route south-to-north staying closer to the Divide line and including more dirt roads : see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=19398&v=2j . I carried tent and sleeping bag but never used it,  preferring the luxury of hotel showers and a bed.
Early this year two British guys went out bravely in winter season north to south, camping most of the time: see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=20516&v=Hq . Most dirt roads were not yet ready for cycling.
Clearly, there are many ways to connect the dots.

I wonder how a north/south route across Massachusetts relates to the Eastern Divide. Whatever Divide branch you choose north of Pennsylvania, it doesn't touch MA by a wide margin. The low height of the Eastern Divide and the population density around it are such that there should be an abundance of tracks that wiggle the Divide line from side to side by a tiny bit.

(Picture taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Continental_Divide )

Ovando!

Thanks, Gunther. The video has been posted here early this year http://www.bikepacking.net/forum/routes/video-trans-spain-by-mountainbike-from-malaga-to-the-french-border-(irun)/
It's a very nice route. However, it doesn't track the Divide line very closely.

Jorge, thanks for your information. In the late spring/early summer of this year I rode a provisional Spanish Divide route of my own design, see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=tS&doc_id=17803&v=sr#462072. During my ride I really fell in love with your beautiful country and its rich cultural heritage. It is ideal for light touring because there are so many villages along the route where you find excellent food and lodging. However, looking back, I haven't realised the potential of this concept by far, for a number of reasons. At the start I was not in good shape physically, so I skipped several planned backroads. I also didn't have a reliable GPS topo map. I plan to come back next year, much better prepared. I guess last year's route was 30% unpaved ; my aim is to get 50% on dirt.

In comparison to the US, Spain has few long-distance dirt roads. Most of the dirt roads you find are forest roads or rural roads giving farmers access to their high lands. They often terminate high on the hill. Few are in good condition for cycling and some are very steep. So you have to stitch many bits and pieces together and prepare for slow going. The nature of a Divide line is that it tracks many exposed mountain ridges. I saw that a lot of them are strewn with wind turbines. The access roads to the wind farms and solar parks are often better suited for cycling. I also hit upon some excellent Via Verde's (old railroads).  If you have other suggestions, please let me know.

This is a page from the book The Mountains of New Mexico by Robert Julyan. It says that the San Luis Pass between Cloverdale and Antelope Wells is presently (i.e. 2006) closed to the public. It is on private property, part of former Gray Ranch owned by the Hearst family. See http://radztravels.blogspot.nl/2010_10_01_archive.html . It is so remote that hikers and bikers can probably sneak through.

That takes out two very welcome food & resupply stations on a route where those points are already sparse.

Warren's Baum Shelter seems to get more reliable, according to this Newsletter (page 1) https://idahoaviation.com/images/usercontent/August%202016%20Flyline%20online.pdf .

The same Newsletter also has an update on the Big Creek Lodge (page 6).

I overlooked this post one year ago, so my reply might be just-in-time or just for the record.

There are five extended pieces of dirt road between Antelope Wells and Tucson that you can combine in many different ways.
1. The road over the San Luis pass between AW and Cloverdale, a ghost town in the Animas Valley. The trail over the pass is closed and probably illegal, but it has been done at least once in recent years https://wanderingbybicycle.com/2013/10/03/adios-estados-unidos-hola-chihuahua-mexico/ . It starts a few miles north of AW and hits the dirt road NM-338 near Cloverdale. NM-338 goes north towards the start of the Geronimo Trail and further to Animas (54 mi between AW and start of the Geronimo Trail, all on dirt).
2. The Geronimo Trail between Animas-NM and Douglas-AZ. Starting in Animas (2 groceries, 1 café) on NM-338, there is about 20 miles of pavement and 9 miles of dirt before the turnoff on the Geronimo Trail. The road goes up to a pass (5850 ft) and descends to Slaughter Ranch and Douglas (groceries, hotels, restaurants). For pics and map see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=tS&page_id=367471&v=bp  (78 mi ; about 55 mi on dirt)
3. The Montezuma Canyon Rd from the east entrance of Coronado National Memorial, about halfway between Bisbee and Sierra Vista, to Parker Canyon Lake. The road climbs over the Montezuma Pass (6500 ft) and rolls down and up to the Lake (22 mi ; about 17 mi on dirt). For map and pics, see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=tS&page_id=367147&v=cQ .
4. The Arizona Trail between Parker Canyon Lake and Tucson. See Biking the Arizona Trail guide by Andrea Lankford.
5. The road between Rodeo-NM and the entrance of the Chiricahua National Monument over the Onion Saddle (34 mi ; about 18 mi unpaved). For map and pics see https://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/page/?o=tS&page_id=367657&v=aF . If you take this road, you might continue towards Tucson over the Gleeson Rd between Hwy-191 south of Sunizona-AZ and Tombstone-AZ (about 40 mi on dirt).

Last year I posted a possible extension of the IHS route, following a loop around the Frank Church Wilderness.
Now that the snow will roughly have melted away and wild fires are not yet spoiling the awesome views, it may get more interest.
The total distance is 553 mi and the elevation gain 53700 ft.
A map and altitude profile that can be zoomed-in can be found on http://ridewithgps.com/routes/10783744

Here is a listing of the services along the route, following the direction from Stanley to Warm Lake.

Stanley (0 mi) : grocery, restaurants, lodging, see IHS map
Sunbeam (13 mi) : no services
Custer (ghost town, 23 mi) : some food & drinks
Challis (56 mi) : grocery, restaurants, lodging
Morgan Creek Rd – Panther Creek Rd  (65-129 mi) : no services ; Deep Creek CG at 109 mi
Confluence Panther Creek – Salmon River (129 mi) : restaurant, lodging (Mother Chucars Café)
Shoup (137 mi) : small store & café
Idaho/Montana state line (158 mi) : about 10 mi off-route Horse Creek Hot Springs CG
Alta Montana (174 mi) : lodging (Alta Montana Ranch), Alta CG
Painted Rocks Lake (177 mi) : several CG’s
Nez Perce Rd (187 mi) :  lodging (West Fork Lodge, about 5 mi off-route)  and grocery (Conner ; about 12 mi off-route)

Magruder Corridor : no services between turnoff to Nez Perce Rd (187 mi) and Elk City (293 mi)
Nearest grocery at Montana side : Conner (12 mi off-route)
more extensive guide of  Magruder  Corridor Rd, see http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsm91_055707.pdf
Campgrounds with good running water sources
-   Deep Creek CG (217 mi ; Deep Creek)
-   Selway Bridge CG (221 mi ; Selway River)
-   Salmon Base Camp CG (236 mi ; Shovel Creek)
-   Poet Creek CG (256 mi ; Bargamin Creek)
Elk City (293 mi) : grocery, lodging, restaurants

Elk City (293 mi) to Riggins (395 mi) : no services
-   Rocky Bluff CG (351 mi ; Slate Creek)
-   Allison Creek CG (385 mi ; Salmon River)
Riggins Hot Springs (385 mi) : lodge only available for private parties, weddings, etc.
Riggins (395 mi) : grocery, lodging, restaurants

Burgdorf (440 mi) : lodge with hot springs, restaurant
Secesh (446 mi) : café (Secesh Stage Stop : burger restaurant)
Warren (457 mi) : café  (Baum Shelter,  often closed)
South Fork Salmon River (470 mi) : no services ; Shieffer CG
Edwardsburg/Big Creek (497 mi) : possibly food & lodging at public airstrip (Big Creek Lodge rebuilt 2016?, 1 mi off-route)
Yellow Pine (519 mi) : grocery, restaurant, limited lodging, CG’s
Landmark (544 mi) : no services
Warm Lake (553 mi) : restaurant, lodging, CG’s (see IHS map)

I never rode the Loop in its entirety. Mid-June 2014 I rode from Stanley to Shoup, but the Horse Creek Pass was still blocked by snow, as was the Magruder Rd. In late August 2015 I rode from Alta Montana to Warm Lake, except for the section between Riggins and Burgdorf that was blocked by wild fires (detour from Riggins over New Meadows and McCall to Burgdorf).

If you want a paper map covering half of the Loop, look for the Butler Motorcycle Maps - Idaho Backcountry Discovery Route. It runs in the opposite direction and covers most of the route between Warm Lake and Alta Montana in detailed maps at a scale 1 inch = 5 mi. It has some additional Points of Interest, but does not have the detailed list of services as the above.

Thanks! I knew that route as Travesia del Sistema Ibérico. Map in http://es.wikiloc.com/wikiloc/view.do?id=6905938

I just completed another 'Trans Iberica', see www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/?o=tS&doc_id=17803&v=sr#462072 . However, there is too much pavement in it, so I am working on Version 2.0

In 2015 the route for the Tour Divide race was changed because the roads south of Rawlins to Medicine Bow NF were often blocked by construction activities for gas& oil exploitation and developments of wind energy parks. Moreover, the TD organisers prefer to include more dirt roads instead of pavement. The classical ACA route is paved from mile 97 (Mineral X Rd) to mile 149 on Map 3A. So they decided to reroute over Wamsutter. Wamsutter has services for food and lodging.  The old and new route rejoin at the WY/CO state line near Slater. You can find more information in http://forums.adventurecycling.org/index.php?topic=13266.0 .